
I 



FLOWERS AND GARDENS 



FLOWERS AND 
GARDENS 

NOTES ON PLANT BEAUTY 



BY 

FORBES WATSON 



EDITED, WITH A PREFACE, BY 

REV. CANON ELLACOMBE 

VICAR OF BITTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE 




JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD 
LONDON AND NEW YORK MDCCCCII 



\BSVb 

All rights reserved 



• • • » ' e « , 
• « • « 

« < • • v « 




Printed by Ballantyns, Hanson dr* Co. 
At the Ballantyne Press 



PREFACE 



THE following papers have been written 
during a last illness^ which has often 
made it impossible to examine the 
specimens I could have wished. In 
the Primrose^ for example, I have only been 
able to make out satisfactorily the drooping 
aspect of the leaf: how this combines itself 
with the more rigid character in the different 
stages of the leaf I do not fully understand. 
For the same reason many of the illustrations^ 
especially in the chapters on Gardenings have 
been selected as being the most ready to hand 
rather than as the best. In my remarks on 
Gardening I have no wish at all to disparage 
the modern systems. My aim chiefly was to 
point out the faults of modern gardenings be- 
cause its merits are such as it is impossible 
to overlook. Lastly^ in many instances my 
remarks bear more or less reference to the 
works of Ruskin^ the greatest and best of 



Preface 



art-teachers; but where I have consciously 
borrowed from him^ I have said so. These 
papers are left in charge of a friend for 
publication. 

FORBES WATSON. 

The pen fell from the hand of my friend 

when he had written the foregoing lines. 

Within two days he was taken '''home'*'* to 

his " Father* s housed This short interval 

was filled with intense sufferings save only 

during a brief sleepy when the flowers of 

which he had been writings and which loving 

hands brought to blossom near his bed^ hauyited 

with their beauty and perfume the unsleeping 

sense of the imagination^ and lured him 

through enchanted fields^ where in his dream 

he saw vision after vision of an unutterable 

glory of floral splendour. The ecstasy of his 

delight in that dream abode with him^ and 

lifted a bright light over the few hours of 

agony that intervened ere he slept again in 

the peace of Death. He believed a foretaste 

had been given him of " that which remaineth 

for them that love God'*'* — that He whose 

dying lips were touched with gall had given 

him a sweeter anodyne in his brief agony. 

vi 



Preface 

'The papers published in this little volume 
were written to solace the languor of the last 
months of life^ when a malady^ which had 
crept by slow approaches upon him^ broke 
down his strength^ and arrested a professional 
career which had begun but recently. They 
betoken a mind gifted with quick^ deary and 
delicate perception^ independency of judgment^ 
and unsparing truthfulness. These were my 
friend'' s characteristic gifts. They are dimly 
mirrored in these pages^ but more clearly in 
the memory of those who knew him well. To 
them this little volume will be welcome^ 
because of him : to others^ perchance^ it may 
be welcome for the worth it has^ because it 
tells of the beauty there is in God^s fairest 
frailest handiwork in flowers^ and bears some 
trace of the rarer amaranthine beauty of a 
soul which wore the white flower of a 
blameless life.'*' 

J. B. PATON. 



vii 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 



NEARLY thirty years have passed 
since this hook was published. At 
its first appearance it was fully 
appreciated by a few persons^ among 
whom Mr. Bright, the author of a ^' A Tear 
in a Lancashire Garden^'* may be specially 
mentioned ; but it has long been out of print 
and is now very scarce^ so that the time for 
a second edition seems to have fully come. 

For it is not a book that should be buried 
or forgotten. In many respects it stands quite 
alone among the numberless books on gardening 
and flowers, for it takes a special line of its 
own^ in which it really remains supreme ; 
a few authors have touched upon the same 
liney but only in a slight sketchy way as a 
small part of the larger subjects on which 
they were writings and a few have attempted 
some feeble imitations of the book and have 
failed signally. 

ix 



Editor's Preface 

"The particular line is this — Forbes Watson 
had been from his early years a lover of flowers 
and a student of botany^ and he knew a great 
deal of the scientific structure of plants. He 
knew that there was nothing wasted in plant 
life^ and that each stem and leaf and flower 
had its separate functions in building up the 
life of the plant. But to his artistic mind 
there was something in stem and leaf and 
flower over and above their functions in the 
growth of the plant; there was beauty^ a 
thing which some of his books noticed^ but of 
which they gave no account. He could not 
stop there^ he was a deeply religious man^ 
and he felt that nothing was made in vain^ 
and that the beauty of leaf and flower had 
its functions^ and was as necessary to the life 
of the plant as any other part of it. So he 
set himself to learn what the flowers could 
tell him of this beauty which gladdened his 
eyes^ but which he felt sure could be made 
to teach him more. Then he did as Job 
advised his friends to do if they wanted to 
know how the hand of the Lord hath 
wrought all this."*^ Job said^ " Ask the beasts 
and they shall teach thee ; and the fowls of 
the air and they shall tell thee; speak to 

X 



Editor's Preface 

the earth and it shall teach thee^ and the 
fishes of the sea and they shall declare to 
thee!'* This is exactly what he seems to 
have done ; he went straight to the flowers 
— -for the most part the commonest every-day 
flowers — and asked them to tell him the secret 
of their beauty^ and he got his answer^ and 
the answer was^ that there was not a line 
of colour in any part^ not an outline in any 
petals not a curve in any leaf^ that could be 
spared or altered ; every such line of colour^ 
outline^ and curve had its work to do and 
did it^ not only in the best^ but in the only 
possible way. He must have worked long^ 
and steadily and patiently^ but he had his 
reward; when he found out the secret of 
beauty in one plants he found in it also the 
key to the beauty in another ; the study of 
the Purple Crocus in his Nottingham meadows^ 
or of the Golden Crocus in his garden^ helped 
him to find analogies of beauty in the Snow- 
drops Snowflake^ Lily^ and Daflodil; and he 
had his further reward in the pleasant 
memories of the beauties he had studied^ 
which enabled him to enjoy them^ and to 
write of them even in his sick-room and on 

his death - bed^ from which he wrote the 

xi 



Editor's Preface 



last lines of his preface^ for in his know- 
ledge of the secret of their beauty he had 
found real joy and thankfulness for him- 
self 

But Forbes Watson was not only a student 
of Plant-life and Plant-beauty ; he was also a 
gardener^ and the second half of the book 
" On Gardens^'* was the most powerful ally 
that natural gardening had at that time^ and 
the one that gave the most important help in 
the destruction of the tyranny of bedding-out 
gardening. If it did not give the actual 
death-blow^ it certainly gave the first of the 
death-blows and the one that had most effect. 
What that tyranny was at the time the book 
was published few can nowadays realise : to 
have hinted a doubt that bedding-out garden- 
ing was the perfection of artistic taste was to 
be ranked as a Philistine heretic^ and to 
have suggested its destruction^ and the substi- 
tution of any other style^ would have been 
considered only worthy of a lunatic. Even 
such scientific books as the Botanical Maga- 
zine^ when describing hardy plants^ gauged 
their beauty and usefulness by their fitness 
or otherwise for carpet beds. Against this 
system Forbes Watson raised his voice ^ and 



Xll 



Editor's Preface 

he did so with power^ because he was able 
to point out one special hut very large blot 
in the system. He showed that it led to an 
utter ignorance of^ and an almost wicked 
contempt for^ the beauty of individual flowers. 
The flower in itself had become nothings it 
was but one small spot in a large mass of 
colour^ and had no value except in so far 
as it helped the mass. His words were : 
" Our flower beds are mere masses of colour^ 
instead of an assemblage of living beings : 
the plant is never old^ never youngs it de- 
generates from a plant into a coloured orna- 
ment!'* "The trumpet gave no uncertain sound^ 
and it did its work against the most de- 
termined opposition — especially from gardeners 
and nurserymen — and one thing that helped 
to the flnal victory was his often-repeated 
advice to study and love the wild flowers. 
With the advocates of bedding-out these could 
have no place^ but Forbes Watson showed that 
the study of plant life and plant beauty could 
be carried on without the help of grand 
exotics or Museum Herbaria ; that the plant 
lover would flnd all he wanted in the fields 
and hedgerows of his own land; and that 

the more he studied them there^ the more he 

xiii 



Editor's Preface 



would love the plants in his garaen ; and 
so would become a better gardener. 

I said that Forbes Watson was a deeply 
religious man : his religion permeates the whole 
book^ and indeed is the key to a great deal of 
what he says. It was the feeling that God 
had made everything very good that made 
him love His works^ not only for their use- 
fulness^ but for their beauty. There were a 
few instances in which he could not see the 
beauty^ but he was quite sure that it was 
there. And it was this same religious feeling 
that made him see a great deal which others 
would not look for. It has been said that the 
book is too fanciful and sentimental^ especially 
in attributing to flowers such characters as 
purity^ passion^ innocence^ sensuousness^ ^c.^ 
but it is the bare fact that Forbes Watson 
saw these things^ and because he saw them^ 
and thought it almost the moral duty of others 
to see the same^ that he recorded his feelings ; 
the flowers had been real teachers of good 
things to him, and he felt it a religious duty 
to hand on the lessons to others. 

Something must be said about the literary 

style of the book. Had his life been spared 

and he had given himself to authorships he 

xiv 



Editor's Preface 



would surely have taken a high rank among 
English authors, The language is everywhere 
clear and concise^ so that there is never any 
mistaking his meaning ; ^ and though he was 
evidently both a traveller and a great reader^ 
there is no paddings no display of hook 
learnings and a very marked absence of 
technical scientific language. It is quite de- 
lightful to read a book on Flowers and 
Gardens so entirely free from the numberless 
hackneyed quotations which generally over- 
burden such books ; and he must have put 
much restraint upon himself in keeping clear 
of such additions. This is very marked in 
his references to Ruskin^ whom he reverenced 
as the greatest and best of art teacher s^^ 
yet though we may see Rus kin's influence 
there is not a single passage from his works. 
It is this that makes the book so fresh and 
original : it is all his own ; he wrote ^ not to 
make a pretty book^ but to help others to find 
the same delights that had brightened his 
life; and his object has been gained^ though 
he did not live to know of it. 

^ The beauty of his language is in every page^ but I 
would specially call attention to his fine description of the 
scorner^p. 162; and of the real beauty of decay ^p, 199. 

XV b 



Editor's Preface 

/ must add a few lines on my share in - 
this new edition. The book has been exactly 
reprinted from the first edition^ verbatim and 
literatim, with the exception of printers' errors^ 
so that no alteration has been made in the 
text; but I have thought it well to add a 
few short footnotes here and there^ mostly in 
confirmation of what Forbes Watson had 
written^ and in a very few cases in correction, 

H. N. E. 

BittOTiy March 25, 190 1. 



XVI 



BIOGRAPHY 



FOR the facts and dates in the 
following short biography I am 
indebted to the kindness of Forbes 
Watson s brother, Watson Fother- 
gill, Esq., of Nottingham, to whom I re- 
turn my best thanks. 

Forbes Watson was born at Mansfield, 
Notts, on February 7, 1840. He was 
educated at a private school at Clapham, 
and was articled to Dr. Regworth, of 
Birmingham. He then entered at St. 
Thomas's Hospital, London, and after a 
brilliant career as a student there,^ he 
was unanimously elected, though only 

1 In 1859, at St. Thomas's, scholar in Physics and 
Natural History; in 1859, at Apothecary's Hall, Silver 
Medal for Botany; in i860, at London University, the 
Gold Medal and Scholarship in Materia Medica and 
Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and the Gold Medal in 
Botany ; and in 1861 he was admitted Licentiate of 
Apothecaries and M.R.C.S. 



Biography 

twenty-one, and from a large number of 
older candidates, as surgeon to the Not- 
tingham Union, a post which he held till 
a short time before his death. He died 
at Nottingham, August 28, 1869. 

He was a born artist and a born natu- 
ralist. As an artist he made a special 
study of the old masters of the Italian 
and Dutch schools, and he was known 
from his early youth as a very clever 
draughtsman ; and his later botanical 
drawings were so exact, and yet so 
artistic, that they won the warm appre- 
ciation of Ruskin. 

As a naturalist he was noted for his 
close observation and patience in research, 
and for his accuracy in the minutest par- 
ticulars, to which he attached a value 
which casual observers overlooked. His 
love of flowers and botany was indeed 
hereditary, for on his mother's side he 
was descended from Dr. John Fothergill, 
F.R.S. (1712-1780), who was in his day 
one of the most noted English botanists ; 
he had a garden at Upton, West Ham, 
which had a European reputation, and 
was a correspondent of Linnaeus. On 

xviii 



Biography 

his fathers side he was descended from 
James Forbes, F.R.S. (1749-18 19), of 
Stanmore, who was a well-known student 
in Indian botany. This hereditary taste 
in botany was strengthened by his own 
deep study, and by his occasional holidays 
in Wales, Scotland, Switzerland, and the 
Pyrenees. 

Among his friends and acquaintances 
he was known as a man of unblemished 
character and pure life ; an intense lover 
of truth, wherever he could find it, and 
a hater of shams and falsehoods of every 
sort; a warm friend, especially to the 
poor, to whom he was most liberal, even 
with limited means, and a labourer among 
them, teaching the boys, and sparing no 
labour to help them in leading good lives ; 
a deeply religious man, to whom his re- 
ligion was a part of his life, and a very 
strong Nonconformist. 

As an author he did not leave as 
much behind him as his friends, who 
knew his high literary ability, would 
have wished. He wrote some magazine 
articles and many religious tracts, and 
one article in the British Quarterly on 



Biography 

Mrs. Brownings Aurora Leigh"; but 
the only book published with his name 
was the Flowers and Gardens," which 
was published nearly three years after 
his death. 

H. N. E. 



XX 



CONTENTS 



PORTRAIT ..... Frontispiece 

PREFACE. ....... vii 

editor's preface xi 

BIOGRAPHY Xix 



PART I 
FLOWERS 



I. THE SNOWDROP 3 

II. THE YELLOW CROCUS . . . . l8 

III. THE PURPLE CROCUS . . . .27 

IV. THE VIOLET 37 

V. THE COWSLIP 45 

VL THE PRIMROSE SS 

VIL THE GLOBE FLOWER . . . -67 

VIII. THE BLACKTHORN, OR SLOE . . -71 

IX. THE poet's NARCISSUS . . . -75 

X. THE SNOWFLAKE {Leucojum (EsHvum) . 78 

XI. THE WHITE LILY 83 

XII. THE DAFFODIL 85 

xxi 



Contents 



PART II 
GARDENS 

I. FAULTS IN GARDENING . . . -97 

II. ON gardeners' flowers . . • 138 

PART III 
VEGETATION 
L spring and summer vegetation . .187 

II. ON THE WITHERING OF PLANTS . . 198 



PART I 
FLOWERS 



A 



I 



The Snowdrop 

IF we examine our garden borders a 
little after Christmas, we are gene- 
rally pretty sure of discovering the 
first signal of returning spring in 
the green points of the Snowdrop clus- 
ters just peeping through the ground. 
Looking rather more closely, we find 
that each plant has put forth two leaves, 
which cohere so as to form at the sum- 
mit a short conical beak, tipped with 
a blunt, protective, callous point. This 
green beak is all that is visible at this 
early stage of growth, and is admirably 
fitted by its wedge-like character for thrust- 
ing through the soil. The flower lies 
at present deep sunk between the leaves, 
and undeveloped, waiting till they have 
cleared its way to light and air. Then 
the leaves separate and expand, the flower 
rapidly outgrows them, and before they 
have attained full size it has withered. 

3 



Flowers and Gardens 



But what I wish more particularly to 
notice now is the white callous tip of the 
beak to which I have just alluded as fitting 
it for piercing the ground. This is not a 
mere temporary provision. It persists in 
the full-grown leaf, and is common to many 
of the Endogenous^ plants, being particu- 
larly well seen in the Snowdrop, Daffodil, 
and Hyacinth, in all of v/hich it resembles 
a little waxen point. And how wonder- 
fully it adds to the beauty of these plants ! 
Every artist knows what a striking effect 
can be given by a few well-placed dots to 
a broken line. And just so is it here. 
Their sparkling, dotty appearance makes 
the Snowdrop clusters look interesting 
and animated from the first moment that 
their tips pierce the ground. And in 
every later stage the leaves of both Snow- 
drop and DafTodil would seem tame and 
meaningless without it. But this is only a 
very small part of the matter. The dot 
has a much higher purpose than that of 
merely giving pleasure to the eye by con- 
trast, like dewdrops scattered over grass. 
It is most essential for the thorough en- 
joyment of beauty that we should get at it 

^ Endogenous plants are those whose leaves have 
parallel veins like grasses, as distinguished from Exo- 
genous plants, like Foxglove, &c., whose leaves are net- 
veined. 

4 



The Snowdrop 

as rapidly and with as little effort as pos- 
sible, for some of the most delightful 
sensuous impressions are very transient, 
and remain but for an instant in their full 
intensity. Look, for example, at a bright 
scarlet Ranunculus in the sunlight. You 
see the scarlet for a second, and then it 
changes into brown. You must turn your 
eyes away before you can renew the im- 
pression. And what is true of colour- 
beauty is to some extent true also of 
every other kind. This does not at all 
interfere with the fact that the longer we 
look the more we shall discover, and that 
some of the deepest impressions come 
latest. I only mean that no impression 
can last unimpaired. Every moment we 
may be gaining something fresh, but we 
are also losing hold of something which 
we had the moment before. There is a 
good illustration of this in the difference 
between childhood and maturity. The 
man in most respects may see deeper than 
the child, but he has lost the freshness 
and vividness of childhood's first percep- 
tions. The eye then needs to get at 
beauty rapidly, and also needs something 
to assist it in holding the main bearings in 
view as it passes from part to part, or in 
recovering them when it has lost them. 

5 



Flowers and Gardens 

Now all this the dot helps to accomplish. 
It emphasises just that point which should 
catch the eye at once, guiding it straight 
to the outlines or leading lines, and res- 
cuing the whole plant from what might 
otherwise appear but a confused patch of 
green. This plan of leading the eye is 
continually adopted by painters. There 
is a good example of it in Leonardo da 
Vinci's Last Supper," where the radi- 
ating beams of the roof and main lines of 
the bodies of the disciples converge to- 
wards the head of Christ, thus carrying us 
at once to the grand point of the picture. 
The means which are used in different 
kinds of leaves to make the outlines miore 
noticeable are often well worth examining. 
Sometimes it is by thickening, as in the 
case we have already mentioned, some- 
times by means exactly opposite. Very 
frequently, as in the Lily of the Valley, a 
thin line of cuticle surrounds the leaf, and 
gleams in the light by its transparency. 
In the common purple Iris of the gardens, 
where the leaf is like a broad sharp sword- 
blade, there is a gradual thinning from 
the centre towards the edges, as well as 
a translucent margin. So that, look at 
what distance you will, the large broad 

surfaces are easily distinguishable from 

6 



The Snowdrop 

each other by mere differences of light 
and shade. 

We now pass on to the flower of the 
Snowdrop. This, as every one knows, 
droops from the end of a slender stalk, 
which arises at the top of the stem from 
a sheath-like bract or spathe. Now look 
at that slender stalk, and notice parti- 
cularly the character of the bend it makes. 
This is not, as it is sometimes represented 
in drawings, a gradual, arching curve. 
The stalk would then look weak, as if 
bent by the weight of the flower, and 
such a condition can never naturally be 
found, except in a sickly Snowdrop, or 
else in double blossoms, where it is ex- 
tremely common. And notice, if you have 
met with any such specimen, how com- 
pletely all its beauty is destroyed. In a 
healthy Snowdrop this stalk is for the 
most part nearly straight, bending slightly, 
and only slightly, to the weight of the 
flower.^ Slender though it be, it seems 
to assert its own freedom and perfect 
ability to stand as upright as it pleases. 
But just at the end it makes a sudden 

^ If the flower be young, there will be hardly any per- 
ceptible bend in the slender flower-stalk ; it will bend 
just slightly in an older specinrien. [In the older speci- 
men the weight is increased by the swelling seed-vessel. 
—H. N. E.] 

7 



Flowers and Gardens 

hook downwards, and this Httle hook per- 
mits the drooping. And how exquisite 
is the result ! We have said that the 
Httle flower-stalk is nearly straight. But 
it must be saved from an appearance of 
over-straightness, and this is effected by 
the investing sheath-like bract, which 
curves over it like a pruning-hook. Cut 
away the bract, and notice how you spoil 
the arch. Now take up the blossom, and 
hold it upside downwards, with the cup 
erect, the contrary position to that in 
which it was meant to be seen. How 
completely its loveliness has vanished ! 
What an insipid flower it would be if that 
were its natural posture, the petals want- 
ing in breadth, the whole aspect destitute 
of character! Everything is right if seen 
just as was originally intended, and wrong 
otherwise. 

But here a difficulty presents itself I 
notice that the three inner petals are care- 
fully ribbed on their internal surface with 
bright green parallel veins, evidently for 
the purpose of ornament, and that Nature 
has furthermore taken the trouble to colour 
the stamens orange, so as to complete the 
harmony. Now, in the ordinary position 
of the flower, the only position in which 
it can appear beautiful as a whole, these 

8 



The Snowdrop 

green lines and stamens are scarcely to 
be seen. Where was the necessity for 
troubling about them if the flower was 
never intended to be looked at upside 
downwards ? The answer, I think, must 
be this. We make the acquaintance of 
any individual existence under an immense 
number of different aspects, and it is the 
sum of all these aspects which constitutes 
that existence to us. A Snowdrop, for 
instance, is not to me merely such a figure 
as a painter might give me by copying 
the flower when placed so that its loveli- 
ness shall be best apparent, but a curious 
mental combination or selection from the 
figures which the flower may present when 
placed in every possible position, and in 
every aspect which it has worn from birth 
to grave, and coloured by all the associa- 
tions which have chanced to cling around 
it. To the bodily eye which beholds it 
for the first time, it might be of no conse- 
quence what lay within the petals, though 
even then the imagination would be whis- 
pering some solution of the secret ; but 
to the eye of mind, when the flower has 
been often seen, that hidden green and 
yellow which is necessary to complete 
the harmony becomes distinctly visible — 
visible, that is, in that strange, indefinite 

9 



Flowers and Gardens 



way in which all things, however appa- 
rently incompatible, seem present and 
blended together when the imaginative 
faculty is at work. The common Star of 
Bethlehem (Ornithogalum Mrnbellatum) is 
a good illustration of the working of this 
principle. When I look at the beautiful 
silver white of the inner surface of the 
petals, my mind is always dwelling upon 
and rejoicing in the fact that their outer 
side is green, though of that green outside 
I cannot see a hair's-breadth. Again, we 
find the same principle at work in the 
feeling which compelled the old sculptors 
to finish the hidden side of the statue. 
They said, For the gods are every- 
where."^ They meant that when they 
looked upon their labours the imagination 
would necessarily carry away their thoughts 
to that hidden side, and that, if not finished 
like the rest, it would have pained them 
by its incompleteness. Of course, when 
Snowdrops are placed together in a bunch, 
we see in some the full beauty of the 
interior, whilst the defects of that position 
are covered by the presence of the sur- 
rounding flowers. 

1 [Tcoj/ Beoav eucKa was the reason, and it was the rule 
with the workmen of the Middle Ages : the inner hidden 
side of arches, as of sedilia, was as carefully carved as the 
conspicuous outside. — H. N. E.] 

lO 



The Snowdrop 

We next come to the name, and 
in the whole vocabulary of plants it 
will be difficult to find another which 
goes so straight to its mark, and renders 
so perfectly the distinctive character 
and expression. Even the generic name 
of Linnaeus, though designed like all 
such for the purposes rather of science 
than of poetry, is beautiful both in mean- 
ing and in form. Galanthus — that is 
to say, Milk Flower," from TaXa ai/6og 
— perhaps comes nearer to the actual 
colour than even our native Saxon, and 
expresses the softness and purity of the 
blossom, as well as the glaucous milky 
aspect of leaf and stem. We have all the 
delicious clearness and purity of sound so 
usual in Greek words ; and the termina- 
tion ''anthus," or 'Manthus," seems pecu- 
liarly well fitted to render the character 
of many Endogens with a sharp, tapering, 
lance-life form of leaf.^ This is not from 
any accidental association with the word 
lance," but rather from both these words 
being to a certain extent alike in ex- 
pression.^ 

^ More especially adapted, if my feeling be correct, to 
plants with lance-shaped leaves and a leafy stem, like 
some of the garden Fritillarias. 

^ [A fanciful derivation, for which there is no authority. 
There is no such word as "lanthus." — H. N. E.] 

1 1 



Flowers and Gardens 

But what is this scientific name when 
compared with the Snowdrop'' of our 
native tongue? How insignificant is that 
nearer rendering of sensuous character and 
colour, deeply capable as these are of ex- 
pressing soul — of conveying the spiritual 
meaning and essence, when placed beside 
that which sets forth not form and aspect 
merely, but the relation of these to what 
we know of the plant, to the history of 
its life and struggle, and all that most 
endears it to our affections ! Such a name 
as Galanthus only gives what we might 
easily discern if the flower were a perfect 
stranger, and even here it would be far 
inferior to Snowdrop. But this is a very 
small part of what we ought to see in the 
flower. It is not the clustering associa- 
tions merely — a word which we hate, on 
their own principles, from its connection 
with the school of Alison and Jeffrey — 
but the exquisite manner in which it 
symbolises the changes of the season 
which gives it birth. This will best be 
shown by closely studying the expres- 
sion. Look at the flower as it first ap- 
pears at the end of January, when winter 
is closed, or at least its main strength 
broken. The snow is thawing, the sky 
overcast, not a single cheering sunbeam ; 

12 



The Snowdrop 

yet one Snowdrop has ventured forth, 
and there it stands, alone in its purity, 
with drooping head, and petals not un- 
folded, modest, patient, unobtrusive, yet 
calm and serene, as if assured of victory 
over storm and cloud. The branches of 
the trees are naked and dripping, the 
stoutest plants have hid their blossoms ; 
yet this fair one, apparently as tender as 
a maiden, through some unseen strength 
can brave the rigour of the time. We 
hail it as the herald of deliverance, the 
foremost of our long-lost friends. The 
Master of the great earth-ark has sent 
out His dove to stay with us, and it tells 
us that the rest will quickly follow. In 
this solitary coming forth, which is far 
more beautiful when we chance to see it 
thus amidst the melting snow, rather 
than on the dark bare earth, the kind 
little flower, however it may gladden us, 
seems itself to wear an aspect almost of 
sorrow. Yet wait another day or two 
till the clouds have broken, and its 
brave hope is accomplished, and the 
solitary one has become a troop, and all 
down the garden amongst the shrubs the 
little white bunches are dancing gaily 
in the breeze. Few flowers undergo 
such striking change of aspect, so mourn- 

13 



Flowers and Gardens 



ful in its early drooping, so gladsome 
when full-blown and dancing in the sun- 
shine.^ 

But what is its relation to the snow ? A 
relation such as no other flower of that 
season bears ; for, like one of those emble- 
matic pageants in which our ancestors 
delighted, it presents in silent masque the 
change that is passing, the green inhabi- 
tant issuing from its slumber in the earth 
and holding forth a semblance of snow 
just melting into dew. The Snowdrop is 
a very star of hope in a season of wreck 
and dismay, the one bright link between 
the perishing good of the past and the 
better which has not yet begun to follow. 
All around is troubled ; the beauty of the 
snow has vanished, whilst that of the 
spring has not yet arrived ; and here is a 
promise that the lower form of purity shall 
be replaced by a higher and more perfect, 
the purity of a nobler form of life — better, 
as the flower is better than the snow- 
crystal, the man than the child, the sinner 
redeemed than the angels, if such there 

^ I do not suppose that a Snowdrop like that which I 
have described will have actually pushed up through the 
snow. It will generally be found in some sheltered spot, 
and most probably is but some bud which has been im- 
perfectly covered. 

14 



The Snowdrop 

are, who have never needed repentance. 
And this less perfect old must perish, that 
from its death may arise the more perfect 
new. 

And though every form of life, whether 
high or low, has its own peculiar beauty, 
yet little here is lost in comparison with 
what we gain. Snow and ice are cold, 
deathlike, dreary. Here is a flower which 
preserves one of the choicest beauties 
of the snow, and shows what we might 
otherwise have deemed impossible — 
that this beauty can be made compatible 
with life of a more active kind. This 
is but one of the lower steps of the 
ladder which must end in heaven, point- 
ing us to a union of happinesses which 
cannot coexist on earth, where activity de- 
stroys contemplation, the fruit the flower, 
and the love of near relationship forbids 
the deepest kind. Are these thoughts 
fanciful or arbitrary ? Is it merely by 
accident that this flower awakens them, 
by some chance interweaving of its form 
with our feelings at the time of its birth, 
or is it not rather plain that every por- 
tion of its fabric was exactly framed 
with a view to awaken and express such 
feelings? If arbitrary, the thought would 
be comparatively worthless ; its value 

15 



Flowers and Gardens 



chiefly consists in its being a true reading 
of nature. 

Let us look, for instance, at just one of 
these unimportant accidents of structure, 
as some utilitarians would consider them, 
though perhaps as necessary to the well- 
being of the plant as they unquestionably 
are to its loveliness. See how the whole 
make of the flower contributes to its drop- 
like character,^ the most essential feature 
in the expression. Now, if one simple 
change were made, this character would be 
wholly lost. There are plenty of drooping 
flowers amongst the Liliaceae. Suppose 
that the Snowdrop had been a Liliaceous 
instead of an Amaryllidaceous plant. The 
two orders so nearly resemble each other 
that no visible change would be needed 
except this one — that the green drop-like 
ovary would be contained within the 
corolla, instead of being outside it. And 
thus the form of the double drop would be 
lost, for the corolla would spring directly 
from the flower-stalk. We may also notice, 
when the flower is closed and the fitness 
of its name most manifestly seen, how the 
white corolla, so narrow where it leaves 

^ [The drop in Snowdrop is not a drop of water {gutta\ 
but is the old name for a pendent jewel, especially an ear- 
ring— H. N. E.] 

i6 



The Snowdrop 



the ovary, lets its fulness run down into 
the tip, so as to give the form of a dew- 
drop just parting from the stalk which 
bears it.^ 

^ Do not take too young a flower in examining this 
last point. 



17 



B 



II 



The Yellow Crocus^ 

HILST the Snowdrop enters 
with so quiet a footstep that 
it might almost pass unob- 
served amidst the remnants 
of the melting snow, the Crocus bursts 
upon us in a blaze of colour like the sun- 
rise of the flowers. 'V ohohaKTv\o<$ 'Hco?, the 
rosy-fingered dawn " of spring, are the 
words which rise to our lips instinctively 
as we look upon it. Most gladsome of 
the early flowers ! None gives more glow- 
ing welcome to the season, or strikes on 
our first glance with a ray of keener plea- 
sure when, with some bright morning's 
warmth, the solitary golden fingers have 
kindled into knots of thick-clustered yellow 
bloom on the borders of the cottage 
garden. At a distance the eye is caught 

^ Examine good out-of-door specimens, and avoid as 
much as possible the later blossoms of the season, which 
are often very faulty. 

i8 




The Yellow Crocus 



by that glowing patch, its warm heart 
open to the sun, and dear to the honey- 
gathering bees which hum around the 
chalices. 

This is one of the many plants which 
are spoilt by too much meddling. If the 
gardener too frequently separates the off- 
sets, the individual blooms may possibly 
be finer, but the lover of flowers will miss 
the most striking charms of the humbler 
and more neglected plant. The reason is 
this : the bloom, when first opening, is of 
a deeper orange than afterwards, and this 
depth of hue is seemingly increased when 
the blossoms are small from crowded 
growth. In these little clusters, there- 
fore, where the flowers are of various 
sizes, the colour gains in variety and 
depth, as well as in extent of surface, 
and vividness of colour is the most im- 
portant point in the expression of the 
Yellow Crocus. 

I have called the Crocus poSoSaKTvXog 
'Hco?, and the expression has an additional 
meaning if we look upon the flower some 
morning of gleaming doubtful sunshine, 
when it is uncertain whether to expand or 
no. Perhaps the folded petal reveals a 
glimpse of the deeper orange within, and 
at times you see playing over the outer 

19 



Flowers and Gardens 



surface, and melting into that deeper 
flame, a faint rosy tint, soft and delicate 
as that which the sunset casts when it 
fades upon the summits of the Alps. 
Then gather a flower, and look into it 
when expanded in more steady sunlight. 
You will see that what at first seem the 
white reflections are in every part of this 
exquisite rose-colour, or violet, which looks 
beautiful under the microscope in a strip 
of the petal skin. It was this tint which, 
playing over the outside of the flower, and 
perhaps blending with a glimpse of orange 
from within, caused the appearance we 
have noticed. And now let us study the 
flower a little more closely. Take one 
fully expanded, and hold it so that the 
light may enter the cup ; you see there 
are six petals,^ three outer and three inner. 
Though at first sight apparently alike in 
colour, close attention will show that the 
inner segments are of deeper hue and 
more distinctly orange than the outer. 
This does not matter much to us just 
now, except as tending to give variety 
and gradation. But we must carefully 
observe the colour itself. Like most 
things that are very beautiful, it varies 

^ [Not true petals, but a perianth of six divisions. — 
H. N. K] 



The Yellow Crocus 



greatly in different aspects : the petals to 
a careless eye, and especially in a dull 
light, may seem but a surface of glossy 
orange. Yet look carefully, and they are 
lighted with rosy reflections, pencilled with 
delicate streaks and nerves of shade, and, 
above all, bestrewed with little gleaming 
points, a host of microscopic stars which 
cast a fiery sheen like that of the forked 
feathers of the Bar-tailed Humming-bird, 
as if the surface were engrained with dust 
of amber or of gold. And with all this 
there is united what seems almost a trans- 
parency, like that of topaz or some precious 
gem, giving us an idea of that fine gold 
*'like transparent glass," which we never 
understand till we see it in the clouds at 
sunset. 

But there is perhaps even yet a deeper 
loveliness in the flower. What is that in 
the lower portion of the chalice which 
makes it seem not so much as if inlaid 
with colour like the rest, but rather as 
if dim golden flame lay burning there, a 
liquid atmosphere of light. The wall, 
when we look closely, is paler and more 
transparent in seeming, or rather its sub- 
stantial colour has given place to a pale 
yellow surface like shaded pearl, mirror- 
like and lustrous, changing whenever we 

21 



Flowers and Gardens 



move it, here bright when it seems to 
catch the golden reflections from above, 
here darkening as we turn it into the 
shade. We might almost compare it to 
the darker yet luminous portion at the 
base of an ordinary gas-flame. To make 
out the cause of this let us break off" a 
petal and examine it. We find the pearly 
surface still there, and unaltered except 
in its brilliancy being subdued. The 
colour is, therefore, evidently due in part 
to reflected light, as it seemed to be ; and 
this may easily be proved by further ex- 
periment. Let a narrow strip of black 
paper be inserted into the corolla, so as 
to cut off the light reflected from the sur- 
rounding walls, but not that which comes 
directly from the sun. The greater part 
of the brilliancy is now seen to be lost. 
Look again at the bottom of the corolla, 
where the stamens arise from it. There 
is a little ring of light around them which 
no change of position can affect. But if 
stamens and pistil be cut away, this light 
will disappear at once, showing that it is 
but a reflection, and very valuable, be- 
cause illuminating the point which light 
can least easily reach. 

But we have said that the change in 
the severed petals was not in kind, but 

22 



The Yellow Crocus 



in degree. How are we to account for 
the character which it still retains ? Be- 
ginning at the bottom of the petal, let us 
strip off the skin, as we can easily do, 
from base to point of the inner face. We 
have now made the petal colourless — 
colourless, that is, so far as there is any- 
thing valuable in colour. Nothing is left 
but a pale, tawny, fleshy lamina, streaked 
with part parallel, part radiating veins. 
The space at the base of the petal still 
remains, being more transparent than the 
rest when we look through it, and still 
changeful in different positions, though 
only from light to shade, after the pearly 
fashion of ordinary cellular tissue. Its 
greater clearness is due partly to an in- 
creased transparency of its cellular tissues, 
and partly to its main thickness being 
occupied by the vessels entering the 
petal. Vessels are always very trans- 
parent ; this quality enables us to trace 
them with the naked eye wherever they 
go, and of course they give transparency 
wherever they happen to be numerous. 
The cellular tissue is, on the contrary, 
opaque and lustreless in the upper part 
of the lamina, the glistening character 
there becoming wholly lost : this little 
dissection will enable us to understand 

23 



Flowers and Gardens 



the mirror-like aspect. Lastly, as to 
the difference of colour, you will see 
that the skin you have stripped off bears 
the colour of the petal with it. It is 
transparent — glances in the sun like gold- 
leaf : and you may observe that the 
colouring matter is much less in quantity 
in the part which corresponds with the 
pearly surface. In the Purple Crocus 
the colour in this part of the skin is 
absolutely wanting, and whatever faint 
colour may seem present there, shines 
through from the outer surface. We 
need not stay longer to notice the eleva- 
tions and depressions of the mirror-like 
portion, or the extreme thinness and in- 
curving of the margin of the petal here, 
which all tend in various ways to in- 
crease the effect. 

But has it been worth our while to 
give this minute attention to the colour 
of a flower.^ Unquestionably yes, for it 
is only by this close, poring attention 
that we shall ever understand its beauty. 
Look at it till you have drunk in all 
its loveliness, or learned the impossi- 
bility of doing so ; turn it into different 
positions, view it by transmitted light, — 
that is, with the sun-rays coming through 
it, — and then again by reflected light, or 

24 



The Yellow Crocus 



with the rays falling straight upon it. 
Do this with a number of specimens of 
different ages, on dull days and on fine 
ones, and you will not only discover 
new beauties, but will learn the great 
difficulty of rightly describing flower- 
colour. Even Mr. Ruskin has fallen 
into error here. He attacks O. W. 
Holmes for the couplet — 

"The spendthrift Crocus, thrusting through the 
mould. 

Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold." 

The lines are evidently faulty enough. 
The Crocus naked and shivering"! 
We might as well say that the flames 
are shivering on the wintry hearth, for 
warmth is the very essence of the flower. 
But to assert that the Crocus is not 
golden, but saffron, is hypercritical ; and, 
moreover, scarcely true. It is saffron in 
a dull light, and in a light still duller it 
may be almost brown. But what is it 
when placed in the unclouded sunshine, 
the only time when the flower is fairly 
describable as a cup ? What can we say 
positively about the colour then } The 
petals are orange here and yellow there, 
and everywhere display that shifting 
glance which we have already described 

25 



Flowers and Gardens 



as only comparable to brightest gold, 
together with a restless glow which, as 
the sunbeams stir it, seems absolutely 
to leave the walls, and roll like a fiery 
atmosphere within. Is not gold the 
comparison best suited to embrace all 
this, and most poetical, because most 
strictly true? 

Here, then, is the use of our minute 
attention. I never noticed the golden 
gleaming of the Crocus until I began to 
look minutely. I can see it easily at 
a distance now, as an element of the 
ordinary colour. 



26 



Ill 



The Purple Crocus^ 

THE Yellow Crocus is a perfect 
flower, leaving nothing that we 
could wish to add to or to alter, 
and at first sight there seems to 
be something less satisfactory when we 
turn from it to look at the Purple Crocus. 
In the first place, the latter plant is far 
less elegant in shape. We must follow 
this carefully and in detail. We shall 
find that the back of a Yellow Crocus 
petal is striped with a series of dark 
lines, of which the central and longest 
runs on to the end of the petal, while 
the shorter radiate from it on each side 

1 In these remarks I refer more particularly to the 
wild flower, Crocus vernus. In garden specimens it 
must be remembered that the shape will be probably 
more or less distorted, and some injury done to the 
general harmony of effect, though the tints may be 
greatly enriched. The less highly cultivated the plant, 
the better will it answer to my description. The flower 
should be wide open when examined. 

27 



Flowers and Gardens 

at the base. These lines must not be 
mistaken for veins. With these they 
have no connection whatever, not even 
corresponding with them in position, and 
being only skin deep, as may readily be 
seen by peeling the back of the petal. 
They are, to all appearance, placed there 
solely for the purpose of ornament. It 
is best to examine them on one of the 
outer petals, as on the inner they are 
but very faintly developed. The value 
of these lines as affording variety of 
colour is at once apparent, but their 
value is still greater with reference to 
the shape of the flower. The Crocus- 
cup possesses a double-curve ; the lower 
part shorter and less noticeable, a slight 
undulating fulness at the very bottom 
of the cup ; the upper long, and bend- 
ing the tip of the petal inwards, as 
gracefully as if it were the crest of a 
wave. Now observe the effect of these 
lines upon that lower curve. We shall 
not attempt to describe their arrange- 
ment. It would be vain to do so with- 
out a diagram, and they can be readily 
understood by actual inspection of the 
flower, without which both description 
and diagram would be useless. It is 
sufficient to say that they are to some 

28 



The Purple Crocus 

extent parallel, or nearly so, and to 
some extent divergent. Now, viewing 
the petal in profile, but so that the 
dark midline may be distinctly seen, we 
shall find that this line marks and em- 
phasises the whole length of the double 
curve firom top to bottom of the corolla. 
Below, the others join it, and, partly 
by the repetition of line and partly by 
their darkness, lend additional emphasis 
and power to the lower curve. But we 
have already said that these lines are 
to some extent divergent, radiating in a 
direction away from the base of the 
petal. Partly from this circumstance, 
and partly from the shape of the figure 
they form, they guide the eye like a 
dart to the central line where it runs 
down into the stalk. And thus we are 
furnished with a system of leading lines, 
enabling us, on looking at the flower, 
to see at a glance the curve of every 
petal and its relation to the others, and, 
besides, giving unity to the whole by 
guiding the eye to the meeting - point 
in the stalk. The effect of lines at 
once parallel and divergent is gained by 
this most beautiful arrangement. 

These lines act in just the same way 
if we look at the petal from the back. 

29 



Flowers and Gardens 



They give prominence to the lower 
swelling by spreading over it like the 
open fingers of a hand, and serve wher- 
ever they go to emphasise the undula- 
tions of the surface which they have to 
traverse. 

Now all this in the Purple Crocus is 
far less exquisite. The upper curve is 
less beautifully rounded at the tip, and the 
lower less distinctly marked, so that the 
corolla is almost funnel-shaped in the 
neck. As the lower curve is unimportant, 
dark parallel stripes, like those of the 
Yellow Crocus, are, of course, not needed 
to enforce it. These stripes have accord- 
ingly vanished, and are replaced by mere 
feather-shaped patches of deeper violet, 
which are all that is needed to insist 
upon the shape of the flower, and to guide 
the eye downwards into the tube. Stripes 
would here be inconvenient as well as un- 
necessary, because the inner petals are 
striped, and a somewhat monotonous tone 
in the outer petals is needed for variety, 
as well as to convey that general ex- 
pression of the flower of which we shall 
presently speak. When we come to exa- 
mine the full form of the petal at the back, 
its inferiority in shape becomes still more 
manifest. Not only have we lost that 

30 



The Purple Crocus 

undulating character of the surface, which 
was emphasised so beautifully by the 
stripes in the Yellow Crocus, but all 
special delicacy of petal outline is entirely 
wanting. 

Again, we have said that colour is the 
grand source of expression in the Crocus, 
and unfortunately in this respect the 
Purple Crocus too often appears at a 
disadvantage. In a garden, especially if 
it be thinly planted, the purplish-brown 
of the naked earth strikes a discord with 
its hues. Then the colour is apt to be 
ill-formed, uncertain, and disappointing on 
a close inspection. Its tints are often 
improved under the gardeners hands. 
We sometimes see lovely specimens in 
the markets, and the colour comes out 
most brilliantly when the flower is as- 
sociated with its yellow and white re- 
lations on a garden border.^ Do we, 
then, mean to assert a real inferiority in 
this flower.'^ Not at all, except in the 
particulars we have mentioned. We have 
made this comparison with a double object 

^ The commonest of the White Garden Crocuses is 
only a pale variety of C. vernus. [The White Garden 
Crocuses are varieties of C. vermis^ but not of the 
Nottingham form of C. vernus of which he is speaking. 
They are chiefly derived from the large Southern variety, 
C. obovatus — H. N. E.] 

31 



Flowers and Gardens 

— partly to render the excellences of the 
Yellow Crocus shape more striking by 
the contrast, and partly to illustrate the 
general principle that what in one work 
of Nature seems less perfect as compared 
with another, is generally only made so 
as the means of developing some peculiar 
kind of utility or beauty, with which 
higher excellence would be incompatible. 
We by no means think that what is best 
in the Purple Crocus must come from the 
gardener, or that it is necessarily seen at 
best advantage when contrasted with its 
White and Yellow congeners. We admit 
at once that it gains here in outward 
splendour. But it frequently happens 
that what is dearest and deepest in any 
flower is best seen when that flower is 
observed alone. Each generally contains 
in itself sufficient elements of contrast, 
and needs no others to assist them. And 
so we shall find it here. In the first 
place, the Purple Crocus differs widely 
from the Yellow in expression. The 
latter is seen to best advantage at noon- 
day, in the clear warm sunshine. It is 
bright, animated, cheering — our heart 
leaps up" as we behold it. This active 
character seems to demand a greater 
vivacity in the curves, a vivacity which 

32 



The Purple Crocus 

would be merely trivial in the Purple 
Crocus. You would no more wish to 
see it there than to see the Madonna 
in the graceful attitudes of a dancer. 
For bright as the Purple Crocus may 
appear at times, I cannot but think 
that its deepest expression is one of 
quiet and repose. It may be beautiful 
in the broad mid-day sunshine, but not 
with its fullest beauty. Go into the 
Nottingham meadows, where the plant 
grows wild, some warm afternoon in 
March, when the dreamy sun has 
just strength to unfold the petals, and 
look at the broad pale sheets of lilac 
bloom outspread upon the early grass, 
whose sweet young green is only just 
beginning to recover from the winters 
frost, the blooms here thin and scattered, 
hardly to be distinguished from water 
left by the retiring floods, and here 
varied with the dark green flowerless 
patches of the Autumn Crocus.^ In that 
distant colour it can never be surpassed ; 
we see it in the fulness of its glory. 
Approach too near, and the enchant- 
ment vanishes. The fair ranks are now 

^ [The author means the Colchicum autumnale^ though 
this is not a Crocus. — H. N. E.] 



Flowers and Gardens 

seen trampled by the foot, and bent and 
broken by the winds. Neither is there 
the beauty we should expect in the 
individual flowers. We gather one or 
two, and the colour seems weak and 
pale ; here and there, on the ground 
before us, is a touch of livelier purple, 
but it fades away as we approach it. 
And yet we remember the time when 
we saw no imperfections there, when 
the blooms were as lovely as now we 
think them at a distance. Can it be 
that our enjoyment from them has really, 
then, diminished ? By no means so. 
Nature asks of us no superstitious blind- 
ness ; and increased sensibility to beauty 
will abundantly make amends for what- 
ever losses it may bring. We gather a 
bunch of flowers, and v/ithdraw, and let 
the old enchantment of the distant purple 
return and gather upon us. And then 
we look at the few well-selected flowers 
in our hand, and let the mind wander 
in the depths of those fair-striped cups, 
their colour so fresh, so cool and delicate, 
and yet not too cool with that central 
yellow stamen-column, and the stigma 
emerging from it like a fiery-orange 
lamp. And now in its turn we feel 
the full charm and superiority of the 

34 



The Purple Crocus 

Purple Crocus. Try in the same way 
to lose yourself in one of the golden 
cups, and you will see that the mind 
can hardly endure to linger within the 
walls of that burning palace : — no rest 
or coolness is met with to refresh us 
there. But the Purple Crocus, partly 
from the full materials for colour-con- 
trast afforded by its interior, partly from 
the exceeding delicacy of tint, the lilac 
stripes and markings, the transparent 
veins, and the pale watery lake which 
lies at the bottom of the cup, seems to 
bear us away to some enchanted spot, 
a fairyland of colour, where no shadow 
ever falls — a land of dim eternal twilight 
and never-fading flowers. Note, too, 
the difference betwixt the Crocuses with 
regard to the stigma. In the Purple 
Crocus, where it is needed to complete 
the harmony of the flower, it rises long 
and flame-tipped out of the tall bundle 
of yellow stamens. In the Yellow Cro- 
cus, on the contrary, it is not needed 
for any special purpose, so that the 
stamens are left very short, and the 
stigma is low sunk between them. 
Notice also the curve of the outside 
of the Purple Crocus cup in a well- 
selected flower, and observe how quiet 

35 



Flowers and Gardens 

and solemnly beautiful it is, in perfect 
harmony with the general expression. 
Most solemn curves are but little varied, 
as that of a dome, for instance, or of 
the sky, or of the sea-horizon. 



36 



IV 



The V to let 

MILTON in his Lycidas^' speaks 
of the glowing violet/' What 
does he mean ? Partly, no doubt, 
he would contrast the colder, 
bluer tints of the Dog Violet with the 
purple of the scented kind, a purple which 
catches the eye in a dim uncertain way, 
known to all Violet seekers, when the 
flower lies half-hidden amongst herbage, 
so that we doubt whether we have really 
discovered one or no. This is Shake- 
speare's ''violets dim." But that is not 
all. We find that a perfectly scentless 
flower impresses us as cold. If the Rose 
or White Jessamine were scentless, it 
would seem cold like the Camellia or 
Blue Gentian of the Alps. As it is, we 
think them warm. This feeling, of course, 
may be modified by other circumstances, 
a smooth, glossy plant seeming colder than 
a hairy or woolly one ; but the feeling 

37 



Flowers and Gardens 



still is there. And this, I believe, leads 
Milton to call the Violet glowing.'' If 
it were not fragrant, the term would have 
little meaning ; as it is, an idea suggests 
itself that the flower is slowly burning, and 
an aroma rising up from it like incense.^ 
And it is singular to see what a very- 
faint perfume can give an impression of 
warmth. We often smell carefully at 
flowers without detecting the slightest 
odour, or perhaps nothing more than we 
find in the Snowdrop — a cold, feeble, 
unpleasant smell, like vegetable tissues 
crushed, which is altogether nugatory. 
But let there be real perfume, though 
faint as that of the Pyrus japonica or 
Crocus, and we recognise it at once as a 
warm atmosphere about the flower. The 
contrast between the Scented and the 
Dog Violet is a very remarkable one. 
How nearly they are alike in general 
aspect, yet how wide a difference in the 
details ! First there are the leaves. 
Those of the Scented Violet you can tell 

1 [There is undoubtedly some correlation between the 
scent and the heat of flowers. In several of the aroids 
the rise of temperature can be measured at the same time 
that the scent is most offensive. It is possible that this 
may be in all flowers, but too slight to be measured ; and 
it is only true with flowers — scented leaves are not so 
affected.— H. N. E.] 

38 



The Violet 

at a glance, before the flowers are come, 
by their larger size, rounder heart-shape, 
downiness, and, above all, by that fresher 
green upon which, in February and 
March, we always look so hopefully, 
remembering the treasures which per- 
haps lie hidden there. There is nothing 
at all of such promise in the darker 
purplish-tinted leaves of the Dog Violet, 
though they have a smoother, neater, 
more regular and finished look. Then, 
as to the flowers, no matter whether 
white or purple, there is generally a rich- 
ness and force in the colour of the 
Scented Violet which impresses us deeply 
the moment we detect it in the hedge — 
a richness which seems almost worthy of 
such fragrance, the one translating the 
other, as it were, into a different lan- 
guage. How unlike the Dog Violet, 
with its larger and gayer, but less im- 
pressive, lilac flowers ! And yet this 
latter seems to have managed everything 
according to the most approved fashion. 
It has lessened its leaves, made its blos- 
soms more conspicuous in colour, and 
greatly increased their size and number. 
The leaves, too, are neater and more cor- 
rect, freed from hairiness and irregulari- 
ties ; and the whole plant has a smoother 

39 



Flowers and Gardens 

and more polished look. It sets itself in 
far more prominent situations, as if to 
court our notice, is everywhere visible in 
the hedge, in the wood, and on the top 
of sunny open banks ; while the Scented 
kind has a sort of rarity just enough to 
make it precious, in unfavourable places 
it cannot bloom at all, so that we search 
over the leaves in vain, and it mostly 
prefers to sink back into the shade, or 
hide amongst the thick, close green of 
the rising hedge-plants. And there is 
apt to be a bluish tint in the April her- 
bage, by which this concealment is assisted. 
The Dog Violet is more noticeable from 
the causes we have already mentioned — 
the situation it chooses, where it will be 
little crowded or interfered with ; the 
larger size, greater number, and more 
conspicuous colour of the flowers, and the 
long stalks or side-shoots upon which it 
sets them. On the whole, we must con- 
sider the Dog Violet an unfortunate plant. 
It never gets the credit it deserves. 
Beautiful as it is with those lilac blossom 
clusters, we can hardly bring ourselves 
to love it deeply — it strikes us so much 
as a degeneration of the Scented species. 
The Scented Violet seems like genius in 
its modest youth, never thinking of dis- 

40 



The Violet 



play,^ and almost unconscious, indeed, of 
its own sweetness and richness. The 
Dog Violet is this genius drawn into 
notice, courted, flattered, and perverted 
by the world, striving ambitiously for 
show, and quite unaware that its deepest 
qualities are lost. 

But is it not presumptuous for man to 
depreciate in this way the perfect work 
of his Creator? Must not our hearts be 
wrong if we look with even the least dis- 
satisfaction upon so lovely a flower as 
this? No, not necessarily. For God 
has given us all these things as teachers, 
and the deepest moral truths are pre- 
sented by them in symbols. There are 
higher and lower degrees of beauty which 
we are meant to recognise, and ugliness 
itself is employed unsparingly, when ugli- 
ness is necessary to teach. The ape in 
a sense is beautiful, fashioned out of micro- 
scopic elements as goodly as those of a 
man ; the further you go in studying its 
structure, the more beauty you will find ; 
yet in general we rightly speak of it with 
disgust. Nevertheless, the Dog Violet 
has a beauty of its own order, which will 
yield much enjoyment if we will but study 

^ [The same idea is to be found in Shakespeare, St. 
Francis de Sales, and Wordsworth. — H. N. E.] 

41 



Flowers and Gardens 

it. It is by no means sent forth only to 
be despised — not even the ape is that, 
for we may admire its strength and easy 
dexterity of limb. The Dog Violet is 
well fitted for the place it occupies ; it is 
a lively, pleasant, neat-looking flower, and 
its blossoms are very lasting. But in the 
qualities which touch us most it certainly 
is deficient ; and on comparing it with 
the Scented Violet, as we cannot possibly 
help doing, since we first learnt to recog- 
nise it by its defects when gathered in 
mistake, the lesson intended seems ap- 
parent. Yet beautiful as the Scented 
Violet is, its colour will not compare with 
that of the common Pinguicula or Butter- 
wort, the Violet of the Marsh. In this 
plant, two or three large flowers, shaped 
not unlike the Violet, but on longer stalks, 
and of far richer purple, rise up from a 
circle of broad, flat leaves, of light yel- 
lowish-green, ever wet with unctuous 
secretion, and beautiful in their contrast 
with the flowers beyond almost anything 
I know. Yet one defect — they have no 
smell. Fragrance on the whole seems 
less common in marsh and water plants. 
We find it rather in the Thymes, Laven- 
ders, Roses, and Myrtles, and the tenants 
of a drier soil. Yet even in England 

42 



The Violet 



we have the Scented Cane/ the Yellow 
Water-lily, and Bog Myrtle, besides 
other offshoots from the drier orders, as 
Meadow-sweet and the aquatic species of 
Mint. But when we do find fragrance 
in the colder and more watery-looking 
plants, the effect is more delicious from 
the contrast. It hangs like a warm atmos- 
phere about them, and seems like a super- 
added life. Take, for instance, the Scented 
Water-lily of foreign lands ; or the Hya- 
cinths and Narcissuses, which have all a 
watery cast about them. One word more, 
and then we quit this subject. Observe 
how the footstalk of the Scented Violet 
sweeps over in an arch, and grasps the 
flower at the top by means of the broad, 
flat lobes of the calyx, which sit astride 
like a saddle. But we cannot see the 
junction of the calyx with its stalk. That 
is covered by an upward prolongation of 
each separate lobe or sepal ; and the con- 
sequence is, that each sepal has the look 
of a loose piece pasted on, the outer one 
slightly overlapping that immediately above 
it. Now, the more usual way is for the 
calyx to appear but a swollen continuation 
of the flower-stalk, so that the joining 

^ [Acorus calamus^ more commonly called the Sweet 
Rush.— H. N. E.] 

43 



Flowers and Gardens 



point is clear enough, as in the Pingui- 
cula, which we have already mentioned. 
And we should have expected that the 
contrary arrangement would be highly 
unpleasing, as giving a sense of insecurity. 
But it is not so at all. Nature delights 
in astonishing us, and every now and then 
will start out of the beaten path to gain 
her end by some altogether unexpected 
means, always making it worth while by 
gaining some unlooked-for beauty. This, 
at least, is the surface aspect of the ques- 
tion ; more truly the one plan is in its 
place as necessary, and as much a matter 
of course as the other. This calyx struc- 
ture is best seen in the Scented Violet ; 
in the Dog Violet the sepals are narrower 
and more widely separated. 



44 



V 



"The Cowslip 

FEW of our wild flowers give intenser 
pleasure than the Cowslip, yet per- 
haps there is scarcely any whose 
peculiar beauty depends so much 
upon locality and surroundings. We feel 
this especially when walking through some 
rich undulating pasture-country with well- 
grown trees and hedges, and far away 
from all thoughts of town, if we come 
suddenly upon a meadow with thousands 
of these flowers scattered over it like 
white flocks of early lambs ; and then, 
as we gather one after another the 
bunches of pale unequal fingers, how 
delicious it is to inhale the sweet odour, 
and look into the quaintly-spotted cups ! 
There is a homely simplicity about the 
Cowslip, much like that of the Daisy, 
though more pensive — the quiet sober 
look of an unpretending country-girl, not 
strikingly beautiful in feature or attire, 

45 



Flowers and Gardens 

but clean and fresh as if new-bathed in 
milk, and carrying us away to thoughts 
of dairies, flocks, and pasturage, and the 
manners of a simple primitive time, some 
golden age of shepherd-life long since 
gone by. And this is one of the most 
intense delights of flowers. They afford 
such a perfect escape from our artificial 
nineteenth-century way of living, appear- 
ing just such a simple unsophisticated race 
of creatures as we might meet with in a 
fairy tale. All the restless, uncomfortable 
passions of constitutions sapped by disease, 
the vices generated in close-pressed hot- 
beds of humanity, the anxieties and frauds 
of the commercial world, seem wholly to 
have passed away, and we have come 
into a region where the inhabitants are 
simple and good, where evil is rare and 
slight, and not the fast clinging thing we 
know. And it does not matter at all that 
the precise historian tells us there never 
was a golden shepherd age like that 
which we are visioning. We know well 
enough that it is so. We know that it 
supposes incompatible advantages — the 
good of all seasons in one. But our 
golden age is real, for it exists now, and 
in these flowers. And even if we chance 
to live where rural simplicity is rare, we 

46 



The Cowslip 

may still rejoice for what slight symbol 
of it is preserved imperishably in the 
Cowslip. 

Cowslips ! how the children love them, 
and go out into the fields on the sunny 
April mornings to collect them in their 
little baskets, and then come home and 
pick the pips to make sweet unintoxicat- 
ing wine, preserving at the same time 
untouched a bunch of the goodliest flowers 
as a harvest-sheaf of beauty! And then 
the white soft husks are gathered into 
balls, and tossed from hand to hand till 
they drop to pieces, to be trodden upon 
and forgotten. And so at last, when each 
sense has had its fill of the flower, and 
they are thoroughly tired of their play, 
the children rest from their celebration of 
the Cowslip. Blessed are such flowers 
that appeal to every sense. There is 
nothing here possible of vulgar gluttony, 
but just a graceful recognition of the lower 
nature, which steps in for once as the 
imagination's guest. May not this be 
part of the reason why the Cowslip is so 
dearly loved ? Cowslip ! The name is 
of ancient Saxon origin, and very appro- 
priate if we consider it well. I have 
already said that the plant reminds us of 
flocks of cattle feeding — at first sight I 

47 



Flowers and Gardens 

think of sheep and lambs more parti- 
cularly ; and these ideas are carried out 
in the whiteness and milky cleanliness of 
the sleek downy skin, in the fat legs of 
unequal size, with their lame irregular 
drooping, as it might be the legs of the 
little ones crowding round their mothers, 
and the flowers breathing fragrance sweeter 
than the sweetest breath of kine. I know 
how little sensible these remarks will 
appear to the unimaginative ; but I am 
dealing with facts as they are, and not 
as we may think they ought to be. Our 
impressions of flowers are largely built 
up of these broken multitudinous hintings, 
often exceedingly vague and indefinite, 
but by no means wholly arbitrary. It 
is from these dim suggestions that our 
ancestors have drawn our present names 
of flowers, sometimes with deep insight 
and poetic truth, sometimes with all sorts 
of flighty and fantastic colouring, lent by 
medicine, astrology, or alchemy. To take 
a few examples. In Bee Orchis, Turk s- 
Cap Lily, Corn Blue-bottle, the resem- 
blance is unmistakably clear, the last name 
of course pointing at the swollen look of 
the flower-cup. Archangel (White Dead 
Nettle), Lady's Fingers, Cuckoo Pint, 
and Cowslip are more indefinite ; you feel 

48 



The Cowslip 

them to be true, but cannot perhaps say- 
why. Moneywort ^ we begin to feel more 
arbitrary, as are Devil's Bit and Solomon's 
Seal ; whilst, finally, Lycopsis, or Wolf- 
like Bugloss, is wholly unmeaning and 
based on no resemblance whatsoever. 

Now, the superficial appearance of the 
Cowslip is strongly suggestive of sheep, 
but if you will try to coin a name from 
this suggestion you will feel that it is 
quite inferior. Lambs and their Mothers, 
Lambs' Legs, or Lambs in the Meadow, 
might seem truer to the eye, but they 
would impress us far less forcibly. And 
why is this ? It is because they leave 
out the fragrance, the deepest sugges- 
tion of all. There is something in that 
balmy sweetness which irresistibly con- 
nects itself with cows. And more, in 
looking at the Cowslip we are always 
most forcibly struck by its apparent 
wholesomeness and health. This whole- 
someness is quite unmistakable. It be- 
longs even to the smell, so widely different 
from the often oppressive perfume of 

1 [Moneywort, from the shape of the leaf ; Devil's Bit, 
from the old legend that the shortened root had been 
bitten by the Devil, and Solomon's Seal, from the seal- 
like appearance of a section of the root. The "wholly 
unmeaning " name of Lycopsis is now given up ; the 
plant is classed as an Anchusa. — H. N. E.] 

49 



Flowers and Gardens 



other plants, as Lilies, Narcissuses, or 
Violets. Now just such a healthy milk- 
fed look, just such a sweet healthy odour, 
is what we find in cows — an odour which 
breathes around them as they sit at rest 
in the pasture, and is believed by many, 
perhaps with truth, to be actually cura- 
tive of disease. So much, then, for the 
name of our plant. The Hps," of 
course, is but a general reference to the 
shape of the petals, and indicates the 
source of the fragrance.^ 

"Cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head," 

writes Milton in the Lycidas." But this 
is not true. There certainly are some 
plants in which Nature seems to hint 
at an appearance of disease, and then 
by some special means converts it into 
a beauty. Take, for instance, the little 
gland-tipped hairs which clothe the young 
blossom-stalks of the flowering currant. 
They look, at first sight, a little ques- 
tionable, and we might doubt if they were 
not something like aphides or mildew. 
But, on examining closer, we find that 

1 [Few plant-names have been more discussed than 
Cowslip ; but the N.E.D. has now proved that, whatever 
the association with the animal may have been, the first 
syllable is the Cow, and the last syllable has no connec- 
tion with human or other lips. — H. N. E.] 

50 



The Cowslip 

they are fragrant, and the fragrance 
shapes the ambiguous suggestion, so that 
we can view them with unmixed pleasure. 
And it is the same with the glands be- 
neath the leaves of many plants, as, for 
instance, those of the common black cur- 
rant. In themselves they can scarcely 
be considered as beautiful, but the eye 
takes delight in them from the moment 
we discover that they are scented. There 
is something of the same sort again in 
the Primrose. That flower may justly be 
described as pale, as if from long lingering 
beneath the shadows of the woods, shut 
out from light and air ; and at this Shake- 
speare has gently and delicately hinted 
in the lines which compare it to a girl 
not as yet consumptive, but gifted with 
that too early loveliness which will even- 
tually ripen into the disease — 

"Pale primroses, 
Which die unmarried ere they may behold 
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady 
Most incident to maids." 

Yet we cannot call even the Primrose 
''wan." That would mean that it had a 
sickly expression, a thing which is at all 
times painful and revolting, and would 
be especially so in a flower. And the 

51 



Flowers and Gardens 

Cowslip, as we have said, is a singularly- 
healthy - looking plant ; indeed, nothing 
about it is more remarkable. It has none 
of the delicacy and timidity of the Prim- 
rose. All its characters are well and 
healthily pronounced. The paleness is 
uniform, steady, and rather impresses us 
as whiteness, and the yellow of the cup 
is as rich as gold. The odour is not 
faint, but saccharine and luscious. It does 
not shrink into the sheltered covert, but 
courts the free air and sunshine of the 
open fields ; and instead of its flowers 
peeping timidly from behind surrounding 
leaves, it raises them boldly on a stout 
sufficient stalk, the most conspicuous ob- 
ject in the meadow. We have in the 
Cowslip no finer spiritual suggestions, 
none of the more evanescent and retir- 
ing beauties, except perhaps in the sleek 
white skin, with its exquisite softness of 
tone. Its poetry is the poetry of common 
life, but of the most delicious common life 
that can exist. The plant is in some 
respects careless to the verge of disorder ; 
and you should note that carelessness 
well till you feel the force of it, as 
especially in the lame imperfection of the 
flower buds, only, perhaps, half of them 
well developed, and the rest dangling 

52 



The Cowslip 

all of unequal lengths. When Irregularity- 
is pretty constant it is sure to mean some- 
thing, as in the lop-sided form of the 
Begonia leaves, or the unequally divided 
corolla of the Speedwell. 

Essentially, the Cowslip and Primrose 
are only the same plant in two different 
forms, the one being convertible into 
the other. The Primrose is the Cowslip 
of the woods and sheltered lanes, the 
Cowslip the Primrose of the fields. And 
very interesting it is to observe how en- 
tirely different is the expression of the 
two original extremes, in many respects 
so much alike, and even in the wild 
state passing into each other by all sorts 
of intermediate varieties. The Oxlip 
and the Polyanthus, with its tortoise-shell 
blossoms, are two of these intermediate 
forms ; ^ the Polyanthus being a great 
triumph of the gardener s art, a delight- 
ful flower, quite a new creation, and 
originally produced by cultivation of the 
Primrose. Another example of this wide 
difference in the expression of plants 
which are essentially the same is seen in 
the Dog and Scented Violets. 

^ [The Cowslip, Primrose, and Oxlip are quite distinct, 
and are known as P, veris^ P. vulgaris^ and P. elatzor, 
— H. N. E.] 

53 



Flowers and Gardens 



Yet, in spite of what we have said, it 
is by no means uncommon to find Cow- 
slips growing in the woods. And at 
first sight you may possibly be inclined 
to think them better than usual, the 
plant is so large and well nourished. 
But you may generally be sure that the 
favourite locality of a plant is, on the 
whole, that which suits it best. And the 
advantages of the Wood Cowslip are 
only apparent : they go no farther than 
the eye. Just compare it with the Field 
Cowslip, and see what it has lost in 
whiteness, and how the compactness and 
true proportion of the one plant contrast 
with the ungoverned looseness of the 
other. I take the Wood Cowslip at its 
best. Even in cattle and vegetables, we 
may be confident, size is not the chiefest 
good. The life is more than meat, 
and the body than raiment." 



54 



VI 



The rrtmrose 

WHAT a change there is in 
turning from the Cowslip 
to the Primrose ! This last 
seems the very flower of 
delicacy and refinement ; not that it 
shrinks from our notice, for few plants 
are more easily seen, coming as it does 
when there is a dearth of flowers, when 
the first birds are singing, and the first 
bees humming, and the earliest green 
putting forth in the March and April 
woods. And it is one of those plants 
which dislikes to be looking cheerless, 
but keeps up a smouldering fire of 
blossom, from the very opening of the 
year, if the weather will permit. The 
source of its expression is a little dif- 
ficult to trace, arising from a subtle 
combination of certain finer elements 
which are more decided, or else awant- 
ing, in the Cowslip. 

55 



Flowers and Gardens 



Now in examining the Primrose we 
must be careful in our choice of plants, 
for hardly any flower is more variable 
both in colour and in form ; even in a 
wild state its flowers are sometimes al- 
most pink/ and in the leaves we may 
find any sort of colour — dark green, 
yellowish green, or green with a tinge 
of blue, this last being an inclination 
towards the marked blue-green of the 
Cowslip. Each kind has generally some 
peculiar beauties of its own, but the soft 
dull tints are, on the whole, the best. 
The dark leaves have sometimes a 
beautiful softness, but are apt to be a 
little wanting in character, whilst the 
glossier and brighter green look harsh 
and metallic, and their fur, besides, is 
coarser. It is, however, by far the best 
plan to examine all kinds carefully, for 
most of the faults are only exaggerations 
of some right tendency, and may help us 
to discover new beauties in the more 
favourably developed plants. Find out 
some Primroses, then, in a sheltered 
wood, the place where they flourish 
best, perhaps growing in damper shade 

1 [In some parts, especially in South Wales, it is not 
uncommon to find wild Primroses which are more than 
almost pink ; they are a decided red. — H. N. E.] 

S6 



The Primrose 

amongst the mossy roots of some old 
beech, or springing up beneath the hazel- 
bushes, amongst Violets and White Ane- 
mones and the more abundant Dog's 
Mercury with its small green flowers, 
from a floor which, with all its green, 
looks so beautifully dry, and is guarded 
by an atmosphere of such echoing still- 
ness that we scarce feel out of doors : 
at least, these are the situations in 
which I have found the Primrose finest, 
but it is often very beautiful on shel- 
tered banks. The flower is of a most 
unusual colour, a pale delicate yellow 
slightly tinged with green. And the 
better flowers impress us by a peculiar 
paleness, not dependent upon any feeble- 
ness of hue, which we always find un- 
pleasing, but rather upon the exquisite 
softness of their tone. And we must not 
overlook the little round stigma, that 
green and translucent gem, which forms 
the pupil of the eye, and is surrounded 
by a deeper circle of orange, which helps 
it to shine forth more clearly. Many 
flowers have a somewhat pensive look, 
but in the pensiveness of the Primrose 
there is a shade of melancholy — a melan- 
choly, however, which awakens no thought 
of sadness, and does but give interest to 

57 



Flowers and Gardens 

the pale, sweet, inquiring faces which the 
plant upturns towards us. Now the 
perfection of softness of colour and the 
perfection of this pensive expression will 
scarcely ever be found in the same indi- 
vidual. The largest and softest blossoms 
are too loose and flagging : we find them 
in over-nourished plants, and they have 
sacrificed everything to sensuous qualities, 
to size, and the perfection of their creamy 
tone. The best expression must be looked 
for in a smaller and more compact flower. 
And it will be noticed that in some Prim- 
roses the stigma is apparently awanting, 
because shorter than the stamens, which 
thus occupy the centre in its place. Now 
the softness of the eye is mainly depen- 
dent on the stigma ; but in spite of a 
little harshness, there is often a strange 
beauty in these stamen-showing flowers, 
and I think that the finest expression I 
have ever met with has been in some of 
them. 

In the Primrose, as a whole, we cannot 
help being struck by an exceeding soft- 
ness and delicacy ; there is nothing sharp, 
strong, or incisive; the smell is *'the 
faintest and most ethereal perfume,'' as 
Mrs. Stowe has called it in her Sunny 
Memories," though she was mistaken in 

58 



The Primrose 

saying that it disappears when we pluck 
the flower. I do not mention this mistake 
in any fault-finding spirit, but to show 
how needful it is for accurate observers 
to examine many specimens ; individual 
Primroses are occasionally scentless, but 
it is merely the result of accident. This 
softness is very striking, too, in the calyx, 
with its long, light, tapering fingers, so 
different from the broad, almost triangular 
teeth of the loose husky calyx of the 
Cowslip, this being, in fact, one of the 
botanical distinctions betwixt the plants. 
Then look at the leaves, those broad, 
arching tongues, so deeply wrinkled and 
uneven ; their very margins, too, wavy, 
plaited, and irregularly indented ; the teeth, 
with their sharp, white vein-points, softened 
by an intervening fringe of down, and 
tearing out almost into raggedness as 
they near the footstalk, from which the 
leaf gradually opens, with something of 
the outline of a tongue of water, into the 
flatter, broadly-rounded tip. You know 
what I refer to here : the wavy irregular 
outline which spilt water so often takes 
when alternately flowing and creeping 
slowly, and, as it were, tentatively, along 
the ground. And the more the leaves 
arch over, the better will the effect of 

59 



Flowers and Gardens 

this be seen, in their flowing, careless, 
easy look, as if they were pouring out of 
the plant. You will observe the gradual 
disappearance of the teeth where the leaf 
flattens out towards its extremity, leaving 
scarce any irregularity there except from 
those water-like sinuosities of the outline. 
It is this which gives the rounded tongue- 
like aspect, which sometimes in the more 
down-bent leaves almost suggests an idea 
of languor, as if they were stretching out 
athirst for falling rain. Yet the moment 
the word arises we reject it as inappropri- 
ate ; and though I have spoken of the 
teeth disappearing at the end of the leaf, 
it will be found that they are really there, 
but smaller and turned downwards, so as 
to be out of sight. And yet one thing 
more has entered into the effect we noticed : 
if you look at the midrib of the leaf in 
profile, you will see that towards the end 
it curves gradually upwards, so that the 
tip of the leaf is, in a manner, hooded. 
In fact, the leaf has a double arch. But 
the upper surface at the end is at times 
so convex that this curve may be easily 
overlooked by a careless observer, though 
in reality it is always there. And the 
insinuating, often sidelong, bend of the 
tip of the leaf, which gives half the force 

60 



The Primrose 



of the tongue -like character, depends 
mainly upon this slight and gradual 
alteration in the curve. 

But what marvellous spell possesses 
these leaves, so that each of them falls 
upon the heart with such soft and silent 
tread ; nay, rather say that each seems 
gifted with a low voice heard in silence, 
like that of the last fruit when it drops in 
autumnal mist upon the dead damp gar- 
den path. But the Primrose leaves create 
the silence in which they speak. It is, 
perhaps, not mere fancy that Milton's 
line — 

" Bring the rath primrose that forsaken dies " — 

is somewhat fitted to express this voice. 
If I had to find words for it, the letter a, 
long and short, and th, would seem par- 
ticularly appropriate. Such words as path, 
bath, faith. This effect depends chiefly 
upon the great breadth of the leaf-tongue, 
and the roundness of their extremities, 
assisted by other qualities of which we 
have spoken, by no means forgetting the 
wrinkling, or the dryness, which we shall 
presently mention. What a difference 
between these and other tongue-shaped 
leaves, as those of the Hart's-Tongue 
Fern ! 

6i 



Flowers and Gardens 

In many Primroses, then, you will at 
once be struck by a certain dryness in the 
look of the leaf ; a dryness like that of 
an absorbent surface, which would be 
nothing unusual in Sage or other such 
parched-up Labiate, but which becomes 
most remarkable when combined with 
these soft and fleshy textures. And it 
will sometimes make you at first a little 
doubtful as to the impression you get 
from the leaf. Harsh, you might say, 
but never altogether so, for we cannot 
help feeling that there is a softness also 
there, to which the harshness yields, a 
softness composed of many elements — the 
dull velvety colour of the leaf which might 
make you believe it downy, the seeming 
readiness to bend any way as though it 
were a piece of cloth, and especially 
that plaited downy character of the 
margin to which we have already alluded. 
Now we can easily find specimens with 
scarce any trace of harshness, but in 
many of the best the softness prevails 
over the harshness without ever quite 
effacing it, so that the rough dryness 
may enter into our conception for a 
purpose I shall afterwards notice. Con- 
trast these leaves and their soft easy 
character with the sharp swords of the 

62 



The Primrose 

Iris, or with the leaves and stem in a 
sprig of spotted Laurel {Aucuda), where 
the lines are amongst the keenest and 
most delicately forcible that I know ; 
or with the bold decided outlines of the 
Crown Imperial, whose tall stem rises 
like a mast through the lower leaves, is 
thence for a short space bare, till it is 
topped by the crowning sheaf of leaf 
swords, out of which droop so gracefully 
the large yellow wax-like bells. Here 
every line seems to pierce like an arrow, 
the composition is so clear and masterly. 
But we have nothing at all of this kind 
in the Primrose ; it is meant to impress 
us as altogether soft and yielding. And 
yet amidst all this softness the decision 
is only veiled. Let but those leaves be 
a little too flat, or wide, or smooth, as 
they often are in over-nourished speci- 
mens, and we shall detect the loss in a 
moment. Look, too, at the decision in 
the lines of their arching, as they gush 
forth like a green fountain from the 
earth, starting at first more erect from 
the centre of the plant, and increasing 
the curve as they lengthen in going out- 
wards, till gradually bent, pushed lower 
and lower by those which climb above 
them, they finally, perhaps, touch the 

63 



Flowers and Gardens 



ground. The bulk of the leaves, how- 
ever, point very markedly upwards, 
being the channels by which wet is con- 
ducted to the centre of the plant, so 
that we may often see them with but 
little of the bending-over appearance, and 
they always seem shortened just in time 
to prevent their running into languid- 
ness. Now turn the leaf sideways, 
and note the changed aspect of the 
margin from thence, still wavy, but 
more regular in its festooning, and sharp 
with emphatic vein-points. How this 
contrasts with our former view when 
we were looking at it rather from 
above ! 

But one of the most beautiful points 
in the Primrose is the manner in which 
the paleness of the flowers is taken up 
by the herbage. Thus look at that down 
upon the flower-stalks, which clothes 
them like a soft thin halo, and seems, 
when you nearly examine it, to resemble 
the white silky fibres of that lovely 
mildew which so often forms on things 
decaying in close places, a something so 
delicate and half-transparent you think 
that it might melt at a touch. Follow 
it thence to the under-surfaces of the 
leaves, with their white midribs and 

64 



The Primrose 

veins, and see, with the plant at some 
little distance, what an exquisite soft- 
ness it produces there, faintly bedimming 
the already lighter green, and whitening 
like hoar-frost when placed in certain 
aspects. At the down-turned margin of 
the leaf it stops, and never appears 
upon the upper surface. Now this pale- 
ness seems to hang about the plant like 
a mystery, for though the leaves of the 
Primrose may at times show a trace of 
the steady paleness of the Cowslip, it 
is more usually confined to their under 
surfaces, and the white flower-stalks with 
their clothing of down. And when we 
are looking at the Primrose, one or other 
of these downy changeful portions is 
continually coming into view, so that 
we get a feeling as if there hung about 
the whole a clothing of soft evanescent 
mist, thickening about the centre of the 
plant, and the under surfaces of the 
leaves which are less exposed to the 
sun. And then we reach one of the 
main expressions of the Primrose. When 
we look at the pale sweet flowers, and 
the soft-toned green of the herbage, 
softened further here and there by that 
uncertain mist of down, the dryness 
of the leaf and fur enters forcibly into 

65 E 



Flowers and Gardens 

our impression of the plant, giving a 
sense of extreme delicacy and need of 
shelter, as if it were some gentle crea- 
ture which shrinks from exposure to the 
weather. 



66 



VII 



T^he Globe Flower 

WHAT is this flower, yellow 
and pale, and yet so singu- 
larly bright, yielding nothing 
in our May gardens to Iris, 
Narcissus, or Tulip, and yet springing 
up wild here and there by streamlets 
in the rocky dells amongst the mountains 
of Wales and Cumberland ? Wherever 
we meet with it, it commands our in- 
stant homage. Amidst the blaze of 
gaudy flowers, for all its unpretending 
dress, none looks of a descent more 
manifestly noble. And when wild we 
always feel as though it had strayed 
from a selected circle. The jolly butter- 
cups and field flowers appear like country 
folk ; it stands among them all con- 
spicuous like a king. I once saw it 
in a dell where it had found for itself 
a little nook of green which the common 
wild flowers might not enter, and it grew 

67 



Flowers and Gardens 



there with white flowers of the grass of 
Parnassus, the one thing fair enough 
to stand by its side. Only two or three 
blossoms were left (for it was late in 
August) lingering still, bright but very 
pale as the dawn-belated moon, and the 
brawling stream spoke hoarsely to them 
in its passing by. I have often seen the 
blossoms finer, but they never impressed 
me more than these did that misty morn- 
ing. Globe Flower ! Why should 
we not call it Kingcup.^ A mere 
buttercup neither needs nor justifies the 
name.^ 

How interesting it is to watch these 
broad round blossoms when they open 
in the spring, first showing themselves 
of a greener hue, and much the best 
if dusted over, as so frequently happens, 
with brown upon the outer petals. And 
gradually, day by day, as the flower en- 
larges, the clear brightness is seen coming 
through the petals, as the moon through 
the folds of cloud which overlay her, till 
at length the full orb shines forth revealed 
like a very planet in its glory. The 

^ [Kingcup is the name of Caltha paliistris^ which is not 
a buttercup, though of the sanie large family as the 
buttercup ; and is mentioned as " Water-Blobs" on p. 189 
— H. N. E.] 

68 



The Globe Flower 

Globe Flower never properly expands. 
The stamens lie concealed within, and 
we like to know that they are there, 
but they will scarce be seen till the 
beauty of the flower is gone. The clear 
moonlight tint is something like that of 
the Mimosa, and is one of the most ex- 
quisite we know. It makes us think of 
some strange metal in which gold and 
silver are combined, and there is further 
a metallic cast about the plant which 
enforces this suggestion — a peculiar hue, 
and a smoothness in the stems and leaf- 
stalks as we slip them through our fingers, 
like the smoothness of a brazen wire. 
All this fits in admirably with the dark 
green leaves and cool poisonous habits of 
the Ranunculaceae. The strength of the 
Globe Flower accordingly lies in the im- 
pressive brightness, the large size and 
peculiar form of the blossom, and in the 
general smoothness and compactness, and 
the darkness and keenness of the leaves. 
Nothing about it looks common from the 
first moment of its issuing from the 
ground. And see how peculiarly those 
leaves are dotted in the angles for em- 
phasis. We find the same thing in the 
Buttercup [Ranunculus repens), with which 
the Globe Flower may be advantageously 

69 



Flowers and Gardens 

compared. But the white dots in the 
Buttercup are changes in the colour of 
the leaf, whilst those of the Globe Flower 
are little translucent spaces in the angles 
of the margin. 



70 



VIII 



The Blackthorn^ or Sloe 

IT bursts upon us suddenly in the 
leafless hedges of March, whitening 
them here and there Hke showers of 
scattered spray. How beautiful, but 
how very frail ! We take a piece home, 
and almost immediately it drops. In an- 
other day or two we pass the same way 
again, and the parent bloom is also gone, 
defaced and half scattered to the wind. 
The Blackthorn seems but made for a 
passing glance, put together slightly and 
carelessly, as if Nature had thrown 
us in the uncertain season of spring a 
little foretaste of the summer loveliness 
she is preparing, just as she cheers us 
now and then with a bright, still, sunny 
day. As we go on towards summer, 
fruit blossoms become compact and more 
finished. There is a great advance from 
the plum to the pear and apple ; and there 
is just the same from the Sloe to the 

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Flowers and Gardens 

Hawthorn. The Hawthorn first clothes 
itself in full array of green, and then puts 
its blossoms forth, loading its branches 
with the fragrant snow, till the long lines 
of distant hedge seem like billows tumb- 
ling over into foam. And when we break 
off a branch how lovely the blossoms are, 
each with its rounded petals — a little ring 
of pearls, and lovely most of all, the half- 
opened buds, which shine in the light 
like little balls of silver. And then that 
sweet and hay-resembling fragrance, what 
delightful thoughts does it recall of May 
days in the past ! But what a difference 
between the Hawthorn and the Sloe! In 
this last, the flowers are irregularly scat- 
tered instead of being bound up into 
these dense, well-compacted corymbs of 
the Hawthorn blossom. The smell is 
faint, bitter, and disagreeable ; and there 
is a comparative harshness in the stamens 
and centre of the blossom. The anthers 
soon burst, and then all beauty disappears, 
for the stamens look loose and disorderly. 
But the most important difference lies in 
the configuration of the petals. The 
Hawthorn blossoms have a compactly 
rounded make, and the petals of each 
flower are individually round and hollow, 

and are set in the ring as accurately as 

72 



The Blackthorn^ or Sloe 

gems in a bracelet. Yet at the same 
time there is a crisped, unfinished look 
about their edges which we always like 
to see, a specimen of that easy careless- 
ness of execution which delights us in a 
sketch by the hand of some great master. 
Trace this from the opening buds, where 
even from the first appearance of the 
white we find the edge of the petal curl- 
ing back, and rippling up into a crest, 
giving force to the bud by raising the 
lines which mark the disposition of its 
contents. Instances of such carelessness 
and want of precision and symmetry 
abound in the animal and vegetable 
kingdoms, but we do not find them in 
the mineral. Thus the two sides of the 
human face are never quite alike, and 
there are a thousand similar lesser differ- 
ences to be observed ; but there is 
undeviating regularity in the most un- 
symmetrical of crystals. We have already 
likened the Hawthorn flowers to a little 
ring of pearls. And many things concur 
very beautifully in creating this resem- 
blance. Each of the petals is remarkably 
round. There is no sort of claw, nor 
any of the usual tapering towards the 
point of insertion ; and the petals scarcely 
at all overlap each other, so that they 

73 



Flowers and Gardens 



look like pearls set side by side. And 
the circularity of each is more distinctly 
seen by reason of the cup-like hollow- 
ness, which holds a little shadow at the 
bottom, with light playing round it in 
resemblance of the lustre of a pearl. 

And now, if we look once more at that 
crisped everted petal edge, we shall better 
understand its meaning. If clear and 
sharp it would not only be much less 
piquant, but would give the flowers, from 
the causes we have just been considering, 
too regular and artificial an aspect. It 
now detains the eye sensibly in passing 
round the margin, preventing any possible 
harshness of force, while it adds to the 
pearly delicacy of the colour by chasing 
it with shadows. This crisping, if I re- 
member right, is scarcely noticeable in the 
petals of the Scarlet Hawthorn, where the 
colour would not require it. And finally, 
this crisping guides the eye right to the 
insertion of the petals, so that their round- 
ness shall be most fully felt. Everything 
about the Hawthorn looks clear, trans- 
parent, and full of light. The petals of 
the Sloe are very different — their round- 
ness inclines somewhat more to the oval, 
and their opaquer white is well calculated 
for effect upon the darker leafless branches. 

74 



IX 



The Poet's Narcissus 

EVERYBODY knows the Poet's 
Narcissus, which is sold so exten- 
sively in the London streets in May, 
and which is, I believe, especially 
cultivated for the purpose. Take a few 
fully - expanded blossoms, for those too 
young will only disappoint you, and look 
at them from a little distance, in such a 
position that the reflected may be helped 
by a little transmitted light. First, then, 
what a purity and softness in the colour ! 
Not a veiny white as you are now looking 
at it, but cool and snowy, and as soft as 
milk, dimpled everywhere into gradations 
by the exquisite curvature of the petals. 
These are large and bend back, to give 
round expanse to the whiteness, so that 
the effect of it may be fully felt. The 
flower is fixed upon a long stout tube, 
cylindrical and green. And mark how it 
spreads from the end of this as from a 

75 



Flowers and Gardens 



centre. There is first the little red-fringed 
cup, yellow within, but green in the deep- 
est part of it. And see how this continues 
the tube through the flower, and how its 
torn edges seem to radiate, and how its 
concavity opposes the broad convexity of 
the flower face. Then how beautifully the 
petals bend back from it, folding upon 
themselves in those delicious curves, so as 
to lay marked emphasis upon the central 
line, and each of them tipped at the ex- 
tremity with a small point \mucro\ 

But wherein lies the special attractive- 
ness of this Narcissus ? Is it not in the 
exquisite way in which cold and heat are 
brought together there, the former of 
course predominating ; — in the blending 
of that scarlet fire and rich delicious fra- 
grance — all fragrance, as I have said, being 
indicative of warmth — with the snowy cool- 
ness and purity ? Such union of opposite 
and apparently incompatible beauties is 
always intensely pleasurable. We experi- 
ence this in looking at the snow on Alpine 
heights, whilst we ourselves lie warm in 
the summer heat of the valley. And the 
red of the Narcissus is specially delightful, 
because it is such a mere streak, and is 
yet so brilliantly contrasted by the snow 
around it, and is so well supported on the 

76 



The Poet's Narcissus 



other hand by the yellow and green within. 
We care greatly more for a little red on 
white than for white on an expanse of 
redness. 

In its general expression the Narcissus 
seems a type of maiden purity and beauty, 
yet warmed by a love-breathing fragrance. 
And then what innocence in the large soft 
eye, which few can rival amongst the 
whole tribe of flowers. The narrow yet 
vivid fringe of red, so clearly seen amidst 
the whiteness, suggests again the idea of 
purity enshrining passion — purity with a 
heart which can kindle into fire. The 
leaves of this Narcissus are less finished 
than those of the Daffodil, so that the 
whole attention is concentrated upon the 
flower. Yet their tint affords a good 
support for the blossom. And we may 
observe that the Narcissus is one of those 
few flowers which improve with age, the 
petals seeming to get larger, and the ex- 
pression of the eye softer, till the blossom 
absolutely withers. The effect of the eye 
is best seen by transmitted light. Put a 
few flowers in the window, and look at 
them as you sit in the room. 



77 



X 



The Snowflake^ 

(^Leucojum JEstivum) 

THE Snowflake is closely related to 
the Snowdrop, and is very simi- 
lar in structure, but its parts are, 
on the whole, less delicately 
fashioned. It is, in fact, the Snowdrop 
on a larger scale, as if intended for more 
sensuous effect, with greater breadth and 
fulness therefore, and colours more de- 
cidedly contrasted. Look at the blossom, 
that little shower of bells, perhaps five or 
six or more in number, all white and pure 
as the driven snow, and bent inio a sort 
of pyramidal fall, of which the uppermost 
is top. Each flower is a broad seal-like 
mass of white, more impressively white 
than in the Snowdrop. And we can 
easily perceive the reason. In the first 

1 [The better title would be " The Summer Snowflake." 
— H. N. E.] 

78 



The Snowflake 

place, on account of the vivid contrast 
of the leaves, which are not glaucous as 
the Snowdrop's, but are bright deep green. 
In the next place, because the shape of 
the corolla has been entirely changed, 
made shorter, and more widely bell-shaped, 
so as to get the utmost possible expanse 
of colour, and impress us as a globe or 
seal of white, just green-touched at the 
edges for relief. And the petals are now 
all white and similar. In the Snowdrop 
there was a clear distinction. There, 
only the three outermost were truly white ; 
and these were longer, and were of softer 
and lighter make, having a varied outline 
of indescribable beauty, as graceful as that 
of a sea-shell. The three innermost and 
shorter lay within the others, united into 
a stout conical cup, the most visible part 
of which was green. Now in the Snow- 
flake, these innermost petals, which are 
white, as we have already stated, are 
thrown into the circumference with the 
others, so as to fill it out to the utmost. 
And hence a marked change in the in- 
terior of the flower. The stamens have 
wider space afforded them, and produce 
a most lovely effect in connection with 
the delicate veining of the petals. And 
if you invert the flower, you will find that 

79 



Flowers and Gardens 



the unnatural posture spoils its beauty less 
than in the Snowdrop. Now this shows 
a form less specialised, less adapted, that 
is, to one particular set of circumstances, 
and so perhaps indicates a lower kind of 
beauty. Evidently, at any rate, this sen- 
suous gain of the Snowflake in the broad 
contrast of green and white has necessi- 
tated a certain loss. The delicacy of 
outline in the corolla of the Snowdrop is 
gone, to be replaced by a simple bell- 
shape, only varied near the margin where 
the petal-tips curve outwards. But if the 
plant has lost in delicacy, it has gained in 
other ways. The whole cast of it strikes 
us as pre-eminently fair and noble. We 
feel this especially in the tallness of the 
stems and leaves, which show a most 
graceful example of well-proportioned 
height ; and, also, in the dropping of the 
large snowy flowers, in which there is less 
of humility than of the subdued yet digni- 
fied bearing of some tall and beautiful 
princess of olden days when standing in 
the presence of a king. 

Here sensuousness, then, has a high 
imaginative value. It is in great part the 
very purity of the white which makes the 
plant so noble. The form of the pedicels 
is, in the main, like what we have in the 

8q 



The Snowflake 



Snowdrop, but the bend is less absolutely 
determined. There is a tendency to relax 
into something of that arching curve, which 
in the Snowdrop but evinces weakness. 
Yet how beautiful do we find it here ; the 
uppermost pedicel straight and more sud- 
den in the bend, the lower ones starting 
off of necessity at sharper angles, and 
arching more and more perceptibly as we 
descend to the lowermost. The spathe 
has but little of the Snowdrop curve, but 
the pedicels look stiff and weak if it is cut 
away. And now we see the force of the 
bell-shape of the corolla, for the petals of 
the Snowdrop would be far too lengthy. 
So that the corolla has been shortened, in 
the first place, to get a fuller and rounder 
mass of colour, and we now find besides 
that the shortening of both corolla and 
spathe is equally necessary to fit them 
for the height to which they have been 
elevated. 

We have already noticed the deep green 
colour of the leaves. These are very long, 
and in their upper portion look singularly 
flat and strap-like, with a broad round 
point which seems cut off abruptly, nay, 
is absolutely notched in the middle. And 
this flatness and bluntness are taken, as 
usual, up by other parts of the plant. The 

8l F 



Flowers and Gardens 



stalk on which the flowers are mounted 
is not round, as we saw it in the Snow- 
drop, for roundness would be unimpressive 
with such length. Broadly two-edged, we 
might almost say triangular, it contracts 
below the spathe into a slender wrist-like 
joint. But still it needs emphasis to 
make it sufficiently effective. And con- 
sequently the stem as it ascends is twisted, 
to prevent the flat side from falling too 
dead upon the eye. So the edges, ridged 
with their slight shallow teeth, cut upon 
us most keenly and decidedly, and the flat- 
ness rises up to terminate in the blunt 
flat-sided spathe, which swells out again 
above the joint, almost as might a human 
limb. Find a Snowflake stem which has 
not this twist and note the difference. 
Lastly, this twisting of the stem gives it 
the tapering look that makes its great 
length seem so well proportioned. View 
the stem in certain aspects, more especi- 
ally, I think, from behind, and this will 
be seen most beautifully. Then take the 
stem and go round it, and you will find 
that the tapering is less than it had seemed, 
because the effect was partly produced by 
the twist, as we have already said. 



82 



XI 



The White Lily 

BEN JONSON calls the White Lily 
''the plant and flower of light." 
Why ? Because of its whiteness, 
says Leigh Hunt, in his Imagina- 
tion and Fancy''; also because there is 
a golden dawn issuing out of the White 
Lily in the rich yellow of the stamens." 
Yes, but is not Johnson also thinking of 
that silvery glistening of the petals, which 
makes them seem almost to shine with a 
light of their own? No darkening shade, 
no trace of richer tinting — those large 
queenly flowers seem wholly compact of a 
lustrous, dazzling whiteness, which gains 
warmth from the stamens with their rich 
orange glow. And all the rest of the plant 
is in perfect harmony with the flowers. 
The foliage, remarkably little stained or 
insect bitten, has even in June the glossy, 
vivid green which we deem peculiar to the 
spring, and often through all the time of 

83 



Flowers and Gardens 



flowering it is bespotted here and there 
with Httle scarlet lady-birds, whose bright 
tints add most conspicuously to the beauty 
of the plant, and seem absolutely to belong 
to it. I do not know what they are doing 
there, — probably in search of insects or 
of other food, — but they furnish in their 
scarlet and black the very colour that is 
needed to set off the green by contrast. 
The plant is almost incomplete without 
them. I wonder if they are attached to 
it in its native country. 



84 



XII 



The Daffodil 

IN the Snowdrop, Snowflake, and many 
similar plants, the spathe or sheath 
out of which the flower arises has 
a fresh leafy aspect, and shows no 
symptom of decay till the plant has shed 
its blossom. Again, in the Calla, or 
Arum Lily of the greenhouses, and our 
own native Cuckoo- Pint {Arum macula- 
turn), this spathe is so largely developed 
as to constitute the most striking beauty 
of the flower. Now there are certain 
kinds of Narcissus, as the Daffodil and 
Poet's Narcissus (popularly called Phea- 
sant's Eye which seem meant to attract 
us by an especial freshness. In the 
Daffodil, for instance, the leaves and 
stem are of a full glaucous green, a 
colour not only cool and refreshing in 
itself, but strongly suggestive of water, 
the most apparent source of freshness, 
and constituting a most delicious ground- 



Flowers and Gardens 



work for the bright, lively yellow of the 
blossoms. Now what sort of spathe would 
be likely to contribute best to this re- 
markable effect of the flower ? Should the 
colours be unusually striking, or the size 
increased, or what? Strange to say, in 
both Daffodil and Pheasant's Eye we find 
the spathe dry and withered, shrivelled 
up like a bit of thin brown paper, and 
clinging round the base of the flower. We 
cannot overlook it, and most assuredly 
we were never meant to do so. Nothing 
could have been more beautifully ordered 
than this contrast, there being just suffi- 
cient suggestion of the dead, the artificial, 
to make us appreciate more fully that 
abounding freshness and life. And we 
are not impressed as by any ordinary 
form of decay. Imagine the spathe un- 
withered, as we elsewhere often find it, 
and see what we should lose.^ Now 
withering is generally meant to remind 
us of the perishableness and transitory 
nature of things ; but we do occasionally 
see it, as in the present instance, em- 
ployed in one of its least attractive 
aspects — to intensify the feeling of fresh- 
ness by the contrast. For other illustra- 

^ A withered spathe is by no means peculiar to these 
plants, but its object in them is remarkably clear. 

86 



The Daffodil 



tions of this, look at the young spring 
leaves when rising in the ditches among 
last year s withered stalks, or at the green 
shoot as it bursts through the dry coat- 
ing of a bulb, like that of the Crocus, or 
of some Irises and onions. 

I said that the Daffodil leaves, espe- 
cially in their colour, are strongly sug- 
gestive of water, the source and type of 
coolness and freshness. But these leaves 
are not the colour of ordinary water, nor 
yet do they recall it in its coolest possible 
tones. What is the reason of this? In 
the first place, it may be answered that 
the blue-green of the leaf is one of the 
most beautiful of all the characteristic cool 
tones that water is capable of assuming. 
But there is a second and still more im- 
portant reason. The blue-green colour 
of water is that in which leaves are best 
capable of imitating it to advantage. 
The colourless tones of water are less 
beautiful, and are not easily made com- 
patible with any but mineral forms of 
structure. It is true that we find clear 
beads on the leaves of the Ice-plant, and 
that there is brilliancy in the eye of 
animals. But these are rare instances, 
and even here the imitation is of water in 
the solid form. Glaucous green, on the 

87 



Flowers and Gardens 



contrary, is just the very tint which water 
possesses characteristically in common with 
the vegetable world, and has the further 
advantage of being cool and shadowy to 
the utmost degree that is compatible with 
the appearance of an active vegetable life. 
And let it be observed that there are 
other points in the Daffodil which contri- 
bute to assist the suggestion we have 
indicated, such as the softness and juici- 
ness of its textures, and the smooth, 
uniform, striped appearance which arises 
from the straightness of its long narrow 
leaves.^ All these combine to give us 
a sort of natural symbolism. We may 
almost say that these leaves are sym- 
bolical of water, representing as they do 
its delicious coolness, its smooth unifor- 
mity of surface, and the power which it 
has of becoming deep blue-green. 

Before proceeding further, let us try to 
get at the exact meaning of the term 
freshness. Freshness then is simply life- 
fulness, or the outward expression or 
manifestation of activity or vital power. 

^ This striped appearance will be easily understood if 
we look at a cluster of Daffodils a little distance away 
from us. Near at hand the same effect is carried out by 
the parallel veining, and other characteristics I have 
mentioned. The imagination blends both effects to- 
gether when we form our conception of the plant. 

88 



The Daffodil 

Consequently whatever seems immedi- 
ately to restore lost strength we call 
refreshing. Thus we speak of a giant 
refreshed with wine, or of a man who 
eats and is refreshed. Still the term is 
most generally associated with the idea 
of cold ; and as cold depresses vitality, 
whilst heat is necessary to maintain it, 
this may at first sight seem strange. 
But we only call a cool breeze more 
refreshing than a warm one because the 
former braces and exhilarates, whilst the 
latter is more apt to depress us. At 
all times warmth, and especially the 
warmth of a fire, seems to give increase 
of comfort rather than of power and 
disposition for bodily exertion. If we 
were frozen that heat might restore us 
to life, but not to an active life ; we 
should feel for a time that our strength 
and energy were gone. And practically 
we find it unsafe to approach a fire 
when we are very cold ; the restoration 
of warmth by such means is always 
painful, and it would be certain destruc- 
tion to a frozen limb. 

Now to apply this definition. The 
freshest-looking plants are those which 
have the most marked external signs of 
active and energetic life. Much mois- 

89 



Flowers and Gardens 



ture, with a certain proportion of light 
and warmth, are the ordinary conditions 
of this, and hence comes the freshness 
of our own spring season, and of the 
colder temperate zone as a whole, as 
well as that of the tropics after the 
falling of those heavy rains which are 
necessary to maintain the balance against 
a sun of such tremendous power. Fresh- 
ness is generally most marked where 
vital activity is strongest— viz., in soft, 
succulent, fast-growing tissues filled with 
abundant sap, and principally, therefore, 
in the younger parts of vegetables, after 
these have been sufficiently sunned to 
give them a look of bright and joyous 
health. Wrinkled, stiff-leaved, spinous, 
or woody plants, on the other hand, are 
characteristic of hot dry places, and we 
feel them to be but half alive, however 
rapidly they grow. Indeed, as a rule, 
they do not grow rapidly. Evergreens 
are remarkably slow : ^ the common Box 
is a very type of slowness, whence its 
frequent use in our older gardens for 
edgings. 

Now freshness is displayed by each 

^ [Not all. Many conifers grow very rapidly. The 
Wellingtonia will often gain two feet in height for many 
years together. — H. N. E.] 

90 



The Daffodil 



different part of a plant after its own 
peculiar manner. Leaves, for instance, 
have but little capability for expressing 
sun-power. They may be regarded as 
the shady portion of the plant ; their 
very place is to be cool, a ground upon 
which to display the blossoms. They 
rarely assume warm tints, except in the 
autumnal withering of the trees — per- 
haps an acknowledgment that too much 
colour is incompatible with the condi- 
tion of their healthy existence. But 
green, the characteristic leaf - tint, re- 
quires little sun for its development. It 
is the tint of mosses, ferns, and the 
least organised plants in general, of the 
early spring, and of the cooler temperate 
zone. And the green parts of plants are 
generally the first to be seen, the flowers 
requiring more sun - power to awaken 
them. 

The flower is the light of a plant, just 
as leaves may be considered as its shade. 
This light may be a blue and cool one ; 
it may even be found, as in some Pansies, 
nearly approaching blackness ; but still it 
has a vividness, a stimulating power, far 
exceeding that of the green, which is the 
most restful tint we know, and it gene- 
rally expresses sun - force in responsive 

91 



Flowers and Gardens 



vividness of hue, in splendour and glow 
of colour, in that higher and more glori- 
ous force of freshness which is too much 
for the leaves to bear.^ Green petals 
we seldom like to see. They betoken a 
comparatively low type, and are often 
associated with poisonous and suspicious 
qualities, especially when found amongst 
the more highly developed flowers. The 
beauty we expect of petals is to be ex- 
pressed in brighter tones, dull tones like 
black or brown being extremely rare. 

We shall now be better able to under- 
stand the freshness of the Daffodil. It 
is a plant which affords a most beautiful 
contrast, a cool, watery sheet of leaves, 
with bright warm flowers, yellow and 
orange, dancing over the leaves like 
meteors over a marsh. The leaves look 
full of watery sap, which is the life-blood 
of plants, and prime source of all their 
freshness, just as the tissues of a healthy 
child look plump and rosy from the warm 
blood circulating within. And this helps 
the leaves in symbolising water in the 
way which has been already partially ex- 

1 It is well to remind the unscientific reader that the 
whole fruit and flower of a plant are essentially nothing 
but an assemblage of leaves undergoing a higher de- 
velopment. 

92 



The Daffodil 

plained. In the first place, they in some 
degree represent water, and make upon 
us to some extent the cool delicious im- 
pression of actual water ; and, in the 
second place, they make us feel instinc- 
tively, as by the signs of some universal 
language, that water is not far distant. 
We are led to think of it in a dim, ideal 
way, not as it actually exists, with all 
sorts of inconveniences, as of mud and 
muddy borders, but in its purity and life- 
giving freshness. Something of the same 
expression, though in a less degree, may 
be found in the leaves of Corydalis bulbosa, 
or in those of the common Columbine. 



93 



PART II 
GARDENS 



I 



Faults in Gardening 

THE pleasure we receive from 
flowers may be divided into sen- 
suous and non-sensuous. There 
is a certain enjoyment felt in rich- 
ness and variety of colour, in shape and 
smell, in juiciness, wiriness, softness, hard- 
ness, sharpness — looking at these qualities 
for their own sake merely. The scent of 
the Rose is delicious, even on a hand- 
kerchief, and altogether independently of 
its connection with the flower ; and the 
blue of the Larkspur would charm us on 
the painter s palette. But so far we please 
nothing but the sense, we stop at the out- 
side ; the plant is no more than a bundle 
of qualities. For true appreciation we 
must advance beyond this, and think of 
the plant as a living being — a friend 
whom we may love, and whose character 
must be intimately known. We shall 
wish to learn all we can of it, the time of 



Flowers and Gardens 



its appearance and flowering, what it does 
with itself in the winter, whether drop- 
ping its leaves and standing bare-branched 
like a tree or shrub, or disappearing be- 
neath the ground like a Snowdrop or Hya- 
cinth, or facing the cold with a tuft of 
leaves lying close upon the earth like a 
Foxglove. What sort of locality does it 
love — field, rock, or marsh? How does 
it treat other plants when it encounters 
them ? Does it twine round them like a 
Convolvulus, creep over them like many 
trailing plants, or bear itself erect like the 
Buttercup? How does it wither? shab- 
bily and untidily like the Pansy, or in the 
neat, decorous mode of the Gentianella? 
These and all other facts which we can 
learn about a plant have a value in an 
imaginative point of view ; they tell us 
something about it, and so enable us to 
understand it, to read its true meaning 
and character. And we find that the sen- 
suous qualities have more than a sensuous 
value, for the imagination discovers that 
they are but a symbolic language, which 
we must receive as exponent of the hidden 
nature of a flower, just as the features of 
the human countenance are interpreters 
of the mind within. 

Now the faults of gardening, against 

98 



Faults in Gardening 



which my present paper is directed, all 
centre in this one thing — the constant 
subjection of the imaginative, or higher, 
to the sensuous, or lower, element of 
flower beauty. We will trace this, first, 
in the general arrangement of gardens 
and of flowers in relation to each other, 
and afterwards in the case of their in- 
dividual culture. To begin, then, we find 
flower-beds habitually considered too much 
as mere masses of colour, instead of as an 
assemblage of living beings. The only 
thought is to delight the eye by the ut- 
most possible splendour. When we walk 
in our public gardens everything seems 
tending to distract the attention from 
the separate plants and to make us look 
at them only with regard to their united 
effect. And this universal brilliancy, this 
striking effect of the masses, is the ac- 
knowledged chief aim of the cultivator. 
Speaking of the older gardens, Mr. C. 
Mcintosh says : No doubt that ten out of 
every twelve sorts of annuals thus grown 
were useless trash, weedy in appearance, 
and producing none of those brilliant 
ieffects for which our modern flower gar- 
dens are so conspicuous ; and the same 
may be said of the perennial plants exist- 
ing in those days. . . . Gardeners of the 



Flowers and Gardens 



days to which we refer had Httle idea of 
producing pleasing and agreeable effects 
by means of masses of colour either har- 
moniously or contrastedly arranged. Their 
great aim was to possess a collection of 
species and genera, without much regard 
to the beauty of individuals, or the effect 
which they were capable of producing." 
(''Book of the Garden,'' vol ii. p. 815.) 
Now I quite admit that the older system 
may have been a little at fault in the 
respects here mentioned, but we of the 
present day are running to exactly the 
opposite extreme. And whilst the old 
faults were of a purely negative kind, 
which did little if any mischief, the faults 
of our modern system are eminently cal- 
culated to vitiate the public taste. 

Has any of our readers, gifted with real 
love for flowers, ever walked through one 
of those older gardens, and observed the 
wide difference in its effect? I am not 
here speaking necessarily of the grounds 
of a mansion, but merely of such a garden 
as might often be found, some twenty 
years ago, attached to any good-sized 
house in a country town or village. Or 
even a little cottage plot of the kind so 
beautifully described by Clare will, to 
some extent^ illustrate my meaning : — 

100 



Faults in Gardening 

And where the marjoram once, and sage and rue, 
And balm and mint, with curled-leaf parsley grew, 
And double marigolds, and silver thyme, 
And pumpkins 'neath the window used to climb ; 
And where I often, when a child, for hours 
Tried through the pales to get the tempting flowers ; 
As lady's laces, everlasting peas, 
True-love lies bleeding, with the hearts at ease ; 
And golden rods, and tansy running high. 
That o'er the pale-top smiled on passer-by ; 
Flowers in my time which every one would praise, 
Though thrown like weeds from gardens nowa- 
days." 

There might be, as Mr. Mcintosh says, 
but little attempt at colour grouping, or at 
the production of effect by masses in a 
narrow sense. But was there any want 
of beauty there? And did you not feel, 
in looking at those flowers, how each 
made you love it as a friend — the Pinks 
and Sweet-Williams, the Everlasting Peas, 
Valerian, Day Lily, Jacob's Ladder, and a 
host of others ? And did you not notice 
how ever and again you fell upon some 
quaint, strange plant which has been ex- 
pelled from the modern border, which 
seemed to touch your inmost soul, and to 
fill the mind, especially if in childhood, 
with a sense of wonder and mysterious 
awe ? What was that plant ? Could not 
anybody tell its name, and where it came 
from, and all else about it, for it must 

lOI 



Flowers and Gardens 



surely have an eventful history ? And 
with curiosity rather stimulated than satis- 
fied by the scanty knowledge you could 
glean, you fell back upon the imagination, 
which set it down as an actor in some 
strange and awful tale, as that of a young 
man who gathered some unknown wild 
flowers that attracted him, and who, to- 
gether with his betrothed, was poisoned 
by their touch. Feelings of this sort 
were strongly awakened in my mind in 
childhood by such plants as Caper Spurge, 
Henbane, Rue, and other more beautiful 
species, as the Dog s-Tooth Violet, with its 
spotted leaves, the common Nigella, and 
the pink Marsh-Mallow of the fields. 

Want of general effect ! Is there none 
in those cottage gardens, where the Nas- 
turtiums twine lovingly all the summer 
amongst Jasmine, Clematis, and thickly 
trellised Rose — where the towering splen- 
dour of the Hollyhocks is confronted by 
the broad discs of the Sunflower, and 
where the huge leaves, herbs, and fruit- 
trees of the kitchen garden run close up 
on or intermix with the border flowers, 
amongst which we may meet at any time 
with some new or long - absent friend ? 
Here are no masses of colour in the 
modern sense ; but do you ever feel the 

I02 



Faults in Gardening 

want of them ? Or can you turn from 
these simple plots, unstudied for effect, 
to the showy, unvaried brilliancy of the 
modern border, and find that you miss 
nothing there ? Do not the plants seem 
comparatively wanting in interest ? Do 
they not seem to be individually less dear, 
to hold you with a lighter grasp? Now 
what can be the reason of this ? The old 
gardeners, we are told, thought little of 
beauty, and chiefly of genera and species. 
Why, then, should the poet find that, with 
all its faults, the old garden stirs him in 
those depths which the modern one can 
seldom reach ? This defect is far less 
conspicuous in the larger hothouses and 
greenhouses, and I am convinced that it 
depends almost wholly on false principles 
of arrangement. We should feel a great 
difference if we saw the plants grow wild. 
I will give an illustration of this. Every- 
body knows the little blue annual Lobelia. 
It is a pretty flower ; but, as the gardeners 
place it in their show-beds, it seems as 
cold and unlovable as if it was wrought 
out of steel. Yet should we ever think 
it so if we found it rising stem by stem 
amongst the looser grass, in such meadows 
as the Harebell, Milkwort, or Eyebright 
{Euphrasia) will often enter, or perhaps in 

103 



Flowers and Gardens 



closer tufts on open banks of gravel ? I 
have chosen localities altogether imagi- 
nary, and am, of course, well aware that 
the plant's colours are too bright to asso- 
ciate easily with the tints of our native 
flowers. 

But is it not right in a public garden to 
seek after brilliant display ? Is not that 
just the very place for it? Yes, if the 
brilliancy be of a proper kind. The fault 
I attack lies in concentrating our attention 
too much upon effects of one special class, 
produced by the bright colours of a 
crowded assemblage of plants, all prim, 
compact, and of a low habit of growth. 
When we turn from these show-beds, how 
often we find there are no other flowers 
in the garden which possess any lively 
interest ! There are sure to be evergreens 
in abundance, but summer is no time for 
them. If we followed Nature, we should 
scorn so much formal neatness, spreading 
often over so large a space of ground, and 
should cultivate a more noble splendour, 
with proper variety and repose. The 
plants would then be more intermixed, as 
we see them in the rustic garden, and we 
should love them as we love them there. 
Beds of the present sort, when permitted 
at all, would then lead off into surrounding 

104 



Faults in Gardening 

beds less uniformly gay, but stocked with 
a sufficiency of handsome perennials and 
flowering shrubs ; and every here and 
there would be some curious plants like 
Mullein, Sunflower, Acanthus, Southern- 
wood, or perhaps some giant Umbellifer, 
or many other species with lovely blos- 
soms, but which are of the class now 
stigmatised as weedy. The choice, of 
course, would vary with the character of 
the bed. Everything of this kind, how- 
ever, our taste is fast driving from us. 
We banish whatever is not striking in 
colour and will not conform to our rule. 
On our side beds, where shrubs are inter- 
mixed, we look at the neat, compact 
Thujas and Junipers, the Scarlet Gera- 
niums and Blue Lobelias, with the purple 
foliage of the Perilla, amongst which the 
chance appearances of a Deadly Night- 
shade or a Physalis (Winter Cherry) 
would seem like water in a desert. What 
gardens ought to be is perhaps best seen 
in those which are specially devoted to 
botanical purposes. 

But worst of all is the neglect of the 
early spring plants. Every one begins 
to value flowers in spring ; we notice 
them more particularly from their being 
so few, and they cheer us by their con- 

105 



Flowers and Gardens 



trast with the winter, and by that cool, 
deHcious freshness which no other season 
can bestow. There arises, then, even for 
the world-worn man, a sort of second 
childhood — the film is half fallen from his 
eyes ; but where will he see those flowers 
which, if any can, might win him back to 
Nature? Anemone, Dog's-Tooth Violet, 
Pasque Flower, Yellow Adonis, Hepatica, 
Gentianella, and the lesser Fritillaries — 
what beauty can be matched with theirs ? 
Yet how rarely do they, seem, to come 
before us now ! 

My chief accusation then is, that gar- 
deners are teaching us to think too little 
about the plants individually, and to look 
at them chiefly as an assemblage of beau- 
tiful colours. It is difficult in those 
blooming masses to separate one from 
another ; all produce so much the same 
sort of impression. The consequence is, 
people see the flowers on the beds with- 
out caring to know anything about them, 
or even to ask their names. It was 
different in the older gardens, because 
there was just variety there, the plants 
strongly contrasted with each other, and 
we were ever passing from the beautiful 
to the curious. Now we get little of 
quaintness or mystery, or of the strange, 

io6 



Faults in Gardening 

delicious thought of being lost and em- 
bosomed in a tall, rich wood of flowers. 
All is clear, definite, and classical — the 
work of a too narrow and exclusive 
taste, as was that of Pope and other 
writers of his school.^ Compare this 
with the work of Nature when she pro- 
duces a striking effect, as in the South 
American forests. The magnificence of 
these is too much for a poetic mind. It 
is something absolutely bewildering and 
embarrassing, and yet just a dim hint of 
what God could show us if He opened 
the full treasures of His splendour ; but 
here there is endless variety, the most 
diverse forms of beauty side by side with 
every description of strange, uncouth, 
enormous growth — Cactus, Palm, and 
Plantain — bound together with rope-like 
Lianas, and Orchids everywhere bursting 
out upon the trees. Consequently the 
effect is right ; we are not tempted to 

^ By far the most natural mode of arrangement is that 
which permits a greater or less intermixture of fruit-trees, 
vegetables, and flowers. We freely grant that this inter- 
mixture will not always be possible, but we are convinced 
that it might generally be effected to a much greater 
extent than at present. Apple-trees, for instance, might 
easily be planted on many of our lawns and flower-beds. 
But, unfortunately, our private gardens in all respects too 
closely imitate the public ones. Some of the faults we 
are discussing are comparatively venial in the latter, 
whilst in the former they are highly mischievous. 

107 



Flowers and Gardens 



lose sight of the individuals in the masses, 
though bewildered by the multitude of 
their claims. And there is the same 
variety in some of the Rhododendron- 
covered uplands of Switzerland, whose 
effect in its kind more nearly resembles 
what our gardeners desire. 

This constant revelling in a blaze of 
colour, without any proper relief, begets 
an indifference to the simple wild flowers, 
which seem tame and insipid to eyes that 
have been injured by excessive stimulus. 
Now none can have a healthy love for 
flowers unless he loves the wild ones. 
In a garden the plants are kept in well- 
behaved restraint, but we must watch 
their ways when they are wholly free, 
when each can choose the home it fancies 
best, and root and wrestle for existence 
there, disposing of its flowers and branches 
with the utmost possible carelessness of 
all other interests than its own, yet some- 
how producing an effect of almost perfect 
harmony and peace. And under no cir- 
cumstances need our wild flowers seem 
insipid to eyes that are rightly trained. 
I had a Foxglove on the table last 
summer whose bells were dropping, when 
there came in a little bunch of Geraniums 
and other greenhouse plants. My first 

io8 



Faults in Gardening 

thought was, How the poor Foxglove 
is killed by the comparison ! " But even 
as I said it there appeared such delicacy 
of tinting in the spotted markings within 
the bells, that the Geraniums for a time 
shrank back abashed. 

And the false treatment of gardeners, 
old and new, being here alike in fault, 
has actually resulted in making some 
plants unpopular. We often hear people 
complaining of the Tulip as a stiff, un- 
gainly flower ; but it only looks so when 
cultivated quite out of its natural appear- 
ance, and planted in formal rows with 
stems as stiff as ramrods. Lay aside the 
false criteria of excellence, and scatter 
the flowers here and there by twos and 
threes, or even in greater numbers, and 
you will no longer complain of their want 
of beauty, or be troubled at their speedy 
fading. The leaves will be a delightful 
object to watch from February to May. 
But people will not see the beauty of 
scattered plants. I remember looking at 
a show of highly cultivated Tulips, and 
contrasting it with two flowers altogether 
untrained, which stood upon the open bed 
of a garden little better than a wilder- 
ness. One of the flowers was yellow, 
and the other a deep rich red ; and the 

109 



Flowers and Gardens 



sun shining through the latter gave it a 
transparency which made it glow like 
wine. I would sooner have had those 
two neglected flowers than all the exhi- 
bition. 

But there is a second way, more im- 
portant even than the last, in which the 
modern system tends to injure a healthy 
taste for flowers — I allude to the custom 
of putting out plants in the beds just for 
the period of bloom, and then removing 
them, as if both before and after flower- 
ing they were destitute of interest. A 
garden is, in fact, no longer the home 
of plants, where all ages, the young, the 
mature, and the decayed, mix freely and 
in easy dress. It has degenerated into a 
mere assembly-room for brilliant parties, 
where childhood and age are both alike 
out of place. In some gardens the system 
is carried out plainly and unaffectedly. 
There are no spring flowers at all worth 
mentioning, but sufficiency of shrubs and 
evergreens to make the place look neat ; and 
we see the main space occupied by large 
bare beds, which will receive the summer 
visitors when they come. About the be- 
ginning of May, these half-hardy plants 
are put in, and miserably uninteresting 
they look for a while, till at length they 

no 



Faults in Gardening 

burst into their few months' splendour, 
to be finally swept away in mass by the 
early frosts. Other gardeners have a little 
more care for spring. There is a show of 
Hyacinths and bulbous plants, but they 
have manifestly been newly set, and are 
removed at once when they have ceased 
to flower. By newly set I mean either 
planted at the close of autumn, or in pots 
at the time when they happen to be in 
bloom. 

Now the natural course is for people 
to delight in loving and cherishing plants 
from their earliest youth, and in tracing 
their slow progress into age. Nothing 
can be more pleasurable than this. At 
the commencement of the year we see 
the green tips of the Snowdrops and 
Crocuses, then those of the Daffodils 
appear, then some fine morning, unex- 
pectedly, as we enter the garden, a Golden 
Aconite has lifted its face from a cluster 
of buds still down-bent, and given us 
cheerful greeting, coming, perhaps, just 
where we had least expected it — from 
some bed where we had forgotten that 
it grew. Then day after day we watch 
the slow unfolding buds of the trees, and 
the progress of each separate plant, as if 
it were our own child, till at length the 

III 



Flowers and Gardens 



latest have put forth their blossoms ; and 
then tenderly and reverently we stand 
beside them as they wither, and observe 
how they yield, some speedily, some 
slowly, to the force of the increasing cold. 
In this healthy natural way of garden- 
keeping there is far less thought of 
splendour. The plants on a bed are not 
all in bloom together, but spring and 
summer flowers are everywhere inter- 
mixed. Whilst looking at some early 
blossom, we enjoy the contrast of its more 
tardy neighbours, beautiful exceedingly 
now in the first freshness of their budding 
foliage, and promising far higher glories 
in two or three months time. The bed 
does not display all its treasures at once, 
or we should rather say that our undazzled 
eyes can here perceive the high value of 
plants which are not in bloom ; the whole 
garden seems one loud voice of exultant 
hope: ''Take this now, and see besides 
what a rich bank there is to draw upon 
for the future." 

But far different is the procedure in 
the modern garden. Everything tends to 
prevent us from considering the plant as 
a living and growing thing. A living 
plant fastens firmly upon the soil, and 
evidently belongs to it ; makes itself a 

112 



Faults in Gardening 

place, and alters everything near ; for- 
bids the approach of some weaker neigh- 
bour, and encounters the thrust of some 
stronger one in its turn. When plants 
are made movable their personality is 
half destroyed, and by confining attention 
to them exclusively at the time of flower- 
ing, we complete the mischief. The plant 
is never old, never young ; in fact, it de- 
generates from a plant into a coloured 
ornament. Look at a Scarlet Geranium, 
as you sometimes see it in a greenhouse, 
with long woody stems continuing from 
year to year ; it may be somewhat un- 
tidy, but it can make you love it, and 
can well bear comparison in this respect 
with the more brilliant offslips of the 
border. And cannot you see how in 
these show-beds all hope is taken away ? 
If covered with spring flowers, these are 
all in bloom together. Of course we 
^now that there are summer flowers to 
follow, but they do not stand full of 
radiant promise amongst the earlier ones, 
to please us by the contrast. They have 
not yet been put in. How hopeless and 
artificial, how unlike Nature, is all this !— 
Nature, which keeps us in perpetual ex- 
pectation, in literally unbroken round, 
from year's beginning to years end. I 

113 H 



Flowers and Gardens 



do not say that every show-bed is wrong ; 
but, generally speaking, it is wrong to 
gather all beauty into one particular 
time or place ; and, above all, the spring 
flowers, as a whole, should be well 
scattered and intermixed with the summer 
plants, or we can never learn to love them 
as we ought. As to general effect, I 
would not have it neglected, but sought 
after in its noblest possible kind, I am 
only contending that justice to the whole 
effect of a bed or garden, instead of being 
incompatible with, is absolutely insepar- 
able from, justice to the individual flowers. 

The third fault of gardening — the too 
obvious use of mechanical contrivances, 
and other artificial interferences with the 
free development of the plant — is less the 
characteristic danger of our day. In many 
cases artificial helps are indispensable. It 
is unquestionably right to try to make 
flowers assume the best possible shapes, 
and if these are unattainable without such 
helps, the helps cannot always be objected 
to. A certain degree of constraint in the 
appearance of our gardens is absolutely 
necessary from the sort of plants we de- 
light in — the half-hardies and evergreens. 
The freedom and apparent carelessness, 
which would be good in better-assorted 

114 



Faults in Gardening 

gardens, would here look slovenly and 
untidy. The beauty our cultivators prize 
is that of neatness and compactness. Na- 
ture gives us this in spring — the very 
season when we are most careless about 
our grounds — and we try to produce it in 
the summer-time, which was intended for 
a looser and freer growth. It is scarcely 
needful to dwell longer on this head. 
There are people even now so unfeeling 
as to clip their trees into the form of foun- 
tains and peacocks, and we sometimes see a 
bed of much-prized flowers so embarrassed 
with pots, hoops, sticks, and matting, that 
our interest in the flowers is destroyed — 
they seem like the inmates of a prison. 
But most people see the wrong of this, and 
the favourite flowers of the day are hardly of 
the kind which need it. It is singular how 
little a highly artificial treatment of certain 
plants will displease us, where things grow 
freely as a whole. In a well-stocked kitchen 
garden how little we are annoyed by the 
fantastic shapes into which fruit-trees are 
often cut ; we pass them over like an ill- 
shaped tree or unsightly fence in the open 
country, amid the fulness cf unembarrassed 
life. And the forms of the kitchen vege- 
tables — rhubarb, asparagus, and cabbage 
— are generally so magnificent. 

115 



Flowers and Gardens 

Lastly, we come to the arrangement of 
flowers after they have been cut. Of course, 
all arrangements are bad which destroy the 
general character and expression of a flower 
for the sake of some particular quality. 
Many people seem to think that they have 
nothing to do but to place flowers so that 
their colours will look nice. We often see 
little nosegays with Fuchsia bells pulled 
off and stuck in upright — that is to say, 
upside downwards. Now any one who 
really cares about Fuchsias cannot help 
being annoyed at this. His eye necess- 
arily rests upon the long, unmeaning stigma 
— unmeaning now, but so beautiful in its 
natural posture, where it carries off the 
flower-droop, and prevents it from being 
cut off too suddenly and abruptly by the 
straight wide margin of the cup. But the 
arranger heeds nothing of this. He has 
the colour he requires — for I suppose him 
to have an eye for colour — and that is 
sufficient. I have seen people do just the 
same with the splendid blossom of the 
Horse Chestnut. When that tree comes 
into flower, there is often a very sudden 
curve in the shoots of the lower branches, 
which makes it extremely difficult to fix 
the shoot in water, without either tilting 
the end of the stalk out of the water, or 

ii6 



Faults in Gardening 

bending the blossoms to one side. Now 
many will get rid of the difficulty by delib- 
erately turning the shoot upside downwards, 
so as to make the blossoms pendulous 
instead of upright, when, of course, all their 
beauty is destroyed. The pendulous blos- 
som so inverted looks weak and straggling, 
the erect one stiff and heavy. Many, too, 
cram flowers together in round dense 
bunches, so that we can see the shape of 
nothing. Sometimes this can hardly be 
avoided, as in the case of Cowslips or 
Violets. And assuredly few contrasts can 
be more lovely than Violets, white and 
purple, massed together with a bunch of 
Primroses, and all resting on the broad 
green Primrose leaves. But what we get 
here is chiefly the colour and the smell. 
Flowers generally are best arranged more 
loosely, and with more of the herbage 
attached, even if there must be fewer of 
them. Thus in spring I like to have two 
or three bright scarlet Anemones {hor- 
tensis), with two or three spikes of Grape 
Hyacinth (racemosum), two Jonquils, two 
pieces of white Ranunculus, two brown 
Fritillaries {pyrenaica) and two white ones, 
and a single stem of the large pink Saxi- 
frage, and all these intermixed and put to- 
gether loosely in a small vase, so as to look 

117 



Flowers and Gardens 



as if they were growing in a meadow, but 
growing unusually close. Summer flowers 
may be arranged more massively, but are 
often cut without sufficient length of stalk, 
so that the Larkspurs cannot rise well out 
of the Sweet-Williams and shorter species. 
Always, then, look well to the forms, and 
let these be clearly seen and skilfully com- 
bined. Take care of them, and the colours 
will take care of themselves. For nine 
people have an eye for colour to one who 
thinks about form; and those who care 
nothing for colour will seldom be much 
interested in flowers. 

But are these faults we have been 
speaking of universal ? That I really 
cannot say ; though well acquainted with 
flowers, I know comparatively little about 
gardening. I merely allude to faults 
which we are continually meeting with 
in greater or less degree, and which 
seem to be fast spreading in our private 
gardens ; and I have thought best to 
attack these evils in their boldest and 
most decisive forms. At any rate, I 
have shown my meaning ; and where 
the charges do not apply, they will do 
no injury. 



ii8 



Faults in Gardening 



Note i 

The best plants for gardens are Euro- 
pean or quasi- European species, because 
these are the most congenial to our soil 
and climate, and the most perfectly in- 
telligible to us in their habits and mode 
of growth. But how many people can 
have any clear idea as to what Geraniums 
or Calceolarias would look like, or try to 
do, where they grow wild and free? I 
myself continually feel, as in the case of 
the Chinese Primrose, that such ignorance 
is a great bar to my enjoyment of the 
flower, and the knowledge is scarcely to 
be got from books. Yet it must always 
be distinctly borne in mind that Art is 
not Nature. Let people create beauty 
howsoever they please, and of whatsoever 
materials, we must not blame them unless 
we can show that their method is in- 
jurious. But I do blame the modern 
taste as tyrannous and exclusive, casting 
out just the plants which should be 
dearest to us, to make room for those 
which can never come so near to heart. 
Think of gardeners stigmatising, as I am 
told is the case, the Lilac and Laburnum 
as plebeian ! — the Laburnum, the fair- 

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Flowers and Gardens 

haired lady of the garden. To what 
pitch of degradation must that man's 
taste have sunk who could reject and 
despise so elegant a tree as this ! 

Note 2 

But why should we not receive the 
garden as a pure creation of the gar- 
dener, feel that it is beautiful, and be 
satisfied with that, without looking any 
further? The question is implicitly an- 
swered in the last chapter. Because in 
such a manner we shall never gain a 
strong interest in the individual flowers. 
Unfortunately, this easy course is the 
very one which most people prefer to 
take, and which the gardeners desire that 
they should take. But to feel deep de- 
light in plants, and yet think little about 
them — to love, and not wish to know 
intimately the object loved — is a palpable 
impossibility. When people act in this 
way, their feelings cannot be worth much. 
Besides, to an unspoiled taste the beauty 
of our modern gardens is in many re- 
spects unpleasing, and we greatly miss 
the higher kind of beauty of which it is 
depriving us. 



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Faults in Gardening 



Note 3 

Of course my remarks in the preceding 
chapter are in nowise directed against the 
common hardy annuals. These plants 
pass their whole term of life in the gar- 
den, start up from the ground in their 
proper season as naturally as do the 
weeds, and it is quite immaterial whether 
they are self-sown or sown by hand. It 
is widely different in the case of those 
half - hardy flowers — perennials, made 
annual most of them — which are set in 
the beds in the middle of their growth, 
and are weeks before they seem at home. 
I think such beds highly objectionable 
when constituting the sole or main feature 
of a garden, to which everything else 
must give way. The common annuals 
are, in fact, of great value, especially for 
children's gardens. Their growth can be 
watched from the earliest stages, and its 
great rapidity, the speedy performance of 
all promise, together with the conscious- 
ness of having tended the plant from the 
very first, exerts a peculiar fascination. 
But many annuals are getting spoilt 
through the senseless desire of change 
for the sake of change ; — old good sorts 

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thrown away to make room for new and 
inferior ones, and sound pure colouring 
rejected for streaky, splashy variety. 

Note 4 

If you have flowers growing in your 
rooms in the early months of the year, 
let them be as much as possible of exotic 
and unfamiliar species, rather than such 
as properly belong to the out - of - door 
garden. Take, for instance, Mimosas, 
Camellias, Hyacinths, in preference to 
Snowdrops, Aconites, or Crocuses. The 
reason for this is obvious. A house- 
raised Snowdrop will seldom be as beau- 
tiful as one grown in the open air, for 
the cold is not uncongenial to these 
plants, and the warmth of a room is far 
more likely to weaken them than to 
develop them to greater advantage. Be- 
sides, the flower -pot necessarily gives 
them a much more artificial look, so 
that you are depriving yourself of half 
the pleasure you would gain from the 
out-of-door blossoms when they come, by 
dulling your appetite with these miser- 
able makeshifts, instead of waiting with 
patience. The Christmas Rose is some 
exception to what I have said. Its 

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Faults in Gardening 

blossoms, I believe, are generally much 
finer in the greenhouse. 

Note 5 

We exclude from our gardens as weeds, 
and with perfect justice, such plants as 
our ordinary Cruciferae and Umbelliferae, 
or the common Dead Nettles and Clovers. 
This does not necessarily mean that they 
are deficient in beauty, but that they 
have not any of those effective qualities 
— that power of instantly attracting the 
eye when planted separately, which is 
necessary in a garden flower. Chce- 
rophyllum temulunty for instance, like 
many another of the Hemlocks, is a 
most graceful plant when met with in a 
country lane, but if placed on the border, 
a great part of its beauty would vanish. 
It needs the dense green vegetation of 
the hedge bottom to show it off to advan- 
tage. But Mullein, Borage, Foxgloves, 
and the larger Spurges ought not to be 
considered weeds. Such plants have 
their proper place in the garden, and 
may be very pleasing there, though it is 
just upon this class that the modern taste 
weighs heaviest. Where are all those 
quaint, strange plants which used to make 

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Flowers and Gardens 

us wonder ? Rhododendrons are very- 
beautiful, but they cannot supply that 
loss. Strange ! and yet it was a strange- 
ness which sprang almost from beneath 
our feet, out of what seemed most familiar, 
and not like that of some far - fetched 
tropical growth. This strangeness ex- 
cited strong interest, and, as it were, 
difficulty of belief, it seemed so very 
near ; the strangeness of tropical plants 
excites much less of this, for we can 
credit with more ease what belongs to 
countries so far away, and of which we 
know so little. And surely in that child- 
world, where everything is wonderful, it 
is better that we should have our deepest 
interest aroused by such plants as our 
own Wake-robin than by any of those 
distant curiosities. I use the old name 
Wake-robin because it is so full of poetry 
— to think of the bird aroused from sleep 
by the soundless ringing of that bell. 
Arum, or Lords and Ladies, is the more 
usual name. In none of those plants, 
then, which I mentioned above, do I see 
unfitness for the garden. They have 
not the dulness and heaviness of the 
Stachys and many other Dead Nettles 
(the dulness of the Henbane is widely 
other), nor the coarseness of Charlock or 

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Faults in Gardening 

Turnip, nor straggling looseness, nor any- 
other of similar objectionable qualities : 
here and there, accordingly, such plants 
should be admitted. 

Note 6 

I believe that nearly every plant has 
an especial loveliness of its own — a some- 
thing distinctive, that is, which is capable 
of endearing it to us. And though such 
degraded forms as Torilis nodosa may 
attract us chiefly as curiosities in all 
but exceptional instances, this loveliness 
founds itself upon some form of genuine 
beauty — beauty, I grant, which, as a 
whole, is often of an inferior order ; thus 
there is nothing to strike the eye in the 
common wild Mignonette, or in many of 
the Galiums, Willow-herbs, Groundsels, 
Rushes, Sedges ; and yet it frequently 
happens that these plants, not generally 
attractive, excel at particular times and 
in particular ways. Usually few people 
would admire the Yellow Charlock, yet 
what splendour it often casts over the 
yet green corn-fields when blended with 
the scarlet of the Poppies! Anthriscus 
vulgaris, sylvestris, and many of the 
Umbelliferae are remarkable for the 



Flowers and Gardens 

beauty of their earliest leaves ; those 
especially of the great Cow Parsnep 
might serve as models for the stone- 
carver ; and the coarse, insignificant 
Goose-grass {Galium aparine), which 
children rub over their tongues to make 
them bleed, fills every hedge-bottom in 
January and February with a host of tiny 
star - crosses as delicate as the work of 
fairies. Then observe that tall Anthriscus 
sylvestris later on in June, how it varies 
the long level of many an unmown 
meadow with the dull misty white of its 
flowers, giving by the looseness of its 
growth a wild, indefinite look, here and 
there almost reminding us of tumbled 
foam, an effect which is greatly aided by 
the meanness and unimpressiveness of its 
foliage. Then the two common Dead 
Nettles [Lamium) are very undeservedly 
depreciated. The Red Dead Nettle is 
one of our earliest spring flowers, and 
there is a soft vividness in the red, espe- 
cially in the earlier blossoms, which leads 
off most exquisitely through the purplish 
tints of the upper leaves. As to the 
White Dead Nettle, I will say nothing of 
it in the spring-time, when it is outshone 
by more brilliant rivals. I always prefer 
it when the November mists are falling, 

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Faults in Gardening 

and its large, soft flowers, undamaged by 
the weather, look forth here and there 
from the hedge. Truly they have a won- 
derful fascination then. In early spring 
the plant has a too excessive vigour — an 
air of rude health, which often spoils it, 
partly, I think, by affecting the leaf colour; 
besides, the stems are apt, then, to be 
far too numerous. It is otherwise in 
November. 

Plants are thus far more universally 
beautiful than animals, because plants can 
never disgust or repel — animals can. And 
though it were easy to name plants in 
which one feels no vivid interest, as, for 
instance, Senecio sylvaticus, I find, on 
running through our native lists, these to 
be comparatively so few, that the fault lies 
most probably with the observer. 

Note 7 

What horror is excited by some insects 
— spiders and centipedes — especially in 
their gigantic tropical forms ! Not to 
feel this, argues insensibility to a part 
of Nature's language, and deprives us 
of pleasure, for it is with a horror 
bordering on the sublime that we read 
of the huge Mygales — spiders almost a 

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Flowers and Gardens 

oot across. Naturalists get too much 
deadened to these feelings, just as a 
medical student finds his dread of the 
corpse to become so far diminished as 
seriously to impair his relish for any tales 
of fear. He gets to look upon it too 
much as a mass of ordinary matter. By- 
the-bye, what is the use of such pests 
of hot countries as mosquitoes and the 
other creatures I have named ? Ap- 
parently this : man is meant for a life 
of labour, to which the temperate climes 
are best adapted. But in the tropics 
labour is far more productive than in 
the temperate zone, and if there were 
nothing to prevent it, most men might go 
there for an easy life. So God holds man 
back by a host of plagues, of which these 
creatures form a part. You may live in 
the tropics if you will, but your comforts 
must be heavily counterbalanced. 

Note 8 

No one would ever dream of employing 
our commoner British flowers for the 
main stock of a garden. We must have 
there something essentially different from 
what is found in the Wild. We like 
our home to be fenced in by a little 

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Faults in Gardening 

world of novelty as well as of brilliance 
and choiceness, and hence a twofold 
reason points us to the more conspicuous 
beauty of the foreign flowers. But this 
is not our only ground for selecting 
foreign plants. Cultivation is, in many 
cases, extremely beneficial to plants, but 
in other instances it is difficult to com- 
pete with the wilding, and almost im- 
possible to surpass it. In Gorse — such, 
for instance, as we see in Devonshire 
— Foxglove (unless, to borrow an idea 
from Ruskin, a greater number of its 
blossoms could be persuaded to come 
out simultaneously), or Broom, no im- 
provement of any kind could well be 
suggested. These plants would be none 
the better for enlargement of the flowers, 
and both shapes and colours are already 
as fine as they can be, so that meddling 
further would only spoil them, as we 
see to be the case in the Double Gorse. 
Now unless the cultivated flower in 
some way surpasses the wilding, it must 
inevitably sink below it in effect. For 
one thing is entirely lost in the garden 
— the beauty derived from the native 
mode of growth. Look at the Bluebell 
Hyacinths, when their countless myriads 
are poured forth beneath the trees like 

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Flowers and Gardens 

a scented twilight, the blue, wherever 
it grows thin, dimming into such coy, 
uncertain cast, that it seems like a misty- 
exhalation, or as if May had sportively 
dashed the earth with her coolest and 
most fragrant wine. Gather a handful 
from that drooping, host or, still better, 
sit down and study the flower as it 
grows, and you would say scarcely any- 
thing could be more lovely. But what 
do we think of it in a garden ? There 
is perhaps no real inferiority, if the 
plants be well grown and limited to the 
shade ; but the spirit and vitality seem 
in a measure wanting, and our interest 
consequently is feeble. The Bluebell 
often spoils in the garden from an un- 
natural bloating of its flowers ; but, apart 
from this, there is such an utter separa- 
tion from the circumstances which gave 
full eff'ect to its beauty, that it is as the 
gem without the setting, the setting sun 
stripped of the gorgeous robing of his 
clouds. Now in cases like this, the 
sight of the cultivated plant may do 
you positive harm. As in the house- 
grown Snowdrop, you become familiar- 
ised with what is virtually an inferior 
condition, and this only deadens your 
love. The plant will probably get 

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Faults in Gardening 

surrounded with unpleasant associations, 
but at any rate you learn to see it 
without interest, and that is very mis- 
chievous. The consequence is that, 
generally speaking, we should either ex- 
clude these common native plants from 
the garden, or so alter them by cultiva- 
tion that they shall seem like a different 
thing. The Double Buttercup (Bachelors 
Buttons) is a common country example 
of the way in which they may be so 
altered, and the Garden Daisies and 
Polyanthuses are still better examples, 
being more completely metamorphosed. 

Now this argument will generally tell 
most with respect to those native flowers 
which are less conspicuous, less remark- 
able for brilliancy and other garden- 
needed qualities. Thus the Bluebell and 
Forget-me-not lose infinitely more in 
the garden than the Globe Flower and 
the Columbine. Yet this is not all, as the 
Foxglove shows us ; there are the local 
associations, though these are actually 
very much more valuable in some plants 
than in others. When we see it in the 
garden we can scarcely appreciate the 
Foxglove — that glorious link betwixt the 
heath, the wood, and the open meadow 
— for want of the light grassed soil, 

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Flowers and Gardens 



the bracken and the gorse, and all its 
other friends. And the Bluebell fails in 
our gardens, not solely because it is 
thrown back on its own unassisted merits, 
but partly because it is dragged from 
its destined sphere of display. Plant 
it by the side of Scilla campanulata — 
the common garden bell which so much 
resembles it, though it has dark red 
stamens, and larger, wider-open flowers 
— and I think that most people will 
prefer the Scilla ; partly, no doubt, 
because the Bluebell is an English flower, 
but partly, too, because the Scilla, though 
in itself less beautiful, has a beauty more 
adapted to the garden, and which loses 
far less than the Bluebells by being 
isolated. I feel confident that our verdict 
would be reversed, if we could compare 
the plants as they grow wild. 

The Bluebell and Foxglove are in 
themselves not unfit for gardens, or as 
illustrations of my argument they would be 
worthless. They become objectionable 
there, mainly because they are common 
native plants, with strong local associations, 
and grow, at full advantage, wild. 

My conclusion, then, is, let the Garden 
be to the Wild idem in altero ; that is to 
say, let it be mainly stocked with plants of 

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Faults in Gardening 



close affinity to our own, so as to be 
adapted to our climate and to be pretty 
thoroughly intelligible to us, but yet let 
them, as far as possible, be of different, 
dissimilar, and more splendid species. 
Such species are more attractive in them- 
selves, and lose least by being stripped of 
their natural surroundings. It may be 
necessary to remind the reader that Globe 
Flowers, Jacob's Ladder, Columbine, and 
many other of our most valuable garden 
plants are native species ; but they are 
very locally distributed in Britain. If 
commoner, though we should still employ 
them, their value would be injuriously 
diminished. Still not unfrequently a com- 
mon plant, like the Primrose, will be 
found to do good service. 



Note 9 

Solon declared that to be the best of 
governments in which an injury done to 
the meanest subject is an insult to the 
whole community. Now this is pretty 
much the law of a garden. Nothing is 
more objectionable than the manner in 
which the common plants are often treated 
to make way for the grandees. Bulbs 

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Flowers and Gardens 

taken up before they are ready, and 
dwarfed for next season in consequence ; 
small trees or shrubs transplanted care- 
lessly, and thrust in wherever they will 
do no harm, because a little too good to 
throw away, and not quite good enough 
to deserve just treatment; and many other 
plants neglected, overshadowed, or in 
some way stinted of their due, as not 
being worth much trouble. At times, 
even worse than this, we see murderous 
digging and slashing amongst plants in 
their period of growth. This is not a 
healthy process for the mind. Whatever 
is unfairly treated is better altogether 
away, since we can view it with no hearty 
relish. And this injustice to the least is 
felt inevitably in a measure by all, for it 
affects the spirit of the place. Half the 
charm of the old-fashioned garden lies in 
that look of happy rest among the plants, 
each of which seems to say, All plant 
life is sacred when admitted here. My 
own repose has never been disturbed, and 
I am confident it never will be." You 
feel this to be a sort of haven of plant 
life, preserved by some hidden charm from 
the intrusion of noxious weeds. The 
modern garden, on the contrary, is too apt 
to assume a look of stir and change ; here 

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Faults in Gardening 

to-day, gone to-morrow. The very tidi- 
ness of the beds and the neat propriety of 
the plants contribute to this impression. 
We feel the omnipresence of a severity 
which cannot tolerate straggling. None 
have been admitted but polished gentlemen 
who will never break the rules ; and we 
feel that the most cherished offender would 
be instantly and remorselessly punished.^ 
But the old garden impresses us always 
by that evidence of loving tenderness for 
the plants. ''That wallflower ought not 
to have come up in the box-edging; but 
never mind, we must manage to get on 
without hurting the wallflower." And At 
is this spirit of compromise, this happy, 
genial, kindly character, as contrasted with 
the sterner and less loving spirit which 
you feel ready to descend upon any trans- 
gressor in a moment, that makes the 
difference of which we speak. 

It is plain, then, that in any garden 
where the meaner plants are slighted or 

^ I have been referring here to the herbaceous plants 
and evergreens of the ordinary beds (Thujas, Junipers, 
Rhododendrons, Sic), rather than to the larger trees and 
shrubs. To run down the glorious Rhododendrons in 
themselves would be preposterous, but they always have^ 
however large they may grow, an air of gentlemanly re- 
straint, a drawing-room manner^ as it were,, which must 
produce the effect we have described wherever they are 
very numerous. 

135 



Flowers and Gardens 



endangered, this sense of security is im- 
possible. Each should be safe and 
honourable by right of citizenship, by 
the mere fact of its presence being 
allowed. We should feel that the test 
of merit has been applied already, and 
is not liable to renewal. But if we can- 
not regard this decision as final, if the 
meaner plants are always liable to be 
retried, and possibly condemned, or ne- 
glected as of doubtful worth, everything 
alike will share their risk. The most 
beautiful is then cast upon its own merits 
exclusively, and the thought of final rest 
is gone. 

*'But you must be recommending a 
general scene of misrule, if the plants 
are to do as they please.'' No, for I 
am only dealing with appearances. If 
the wallflower which has strayed into the 
box should look unsightly, by all means 
root it out. I only want the aspect of 
liberty in the plants, so that the garden 
shall, as most wild vegetation is, be ex- 
pressive of fatherly, indulgent, peaceful 
rule ; for the vegetable kingdom is the 
sphere of all others from which disquiet 
and restraint are by nature the most 
completely banished. Life is too cold in 
the mineral kingdom ; in the animal we 

136 



Faults in Gardening 

rise into the region of will and contest 
with moral evil. Amongst plants there 
is comparatively little to disturb ; the 
beauty, if of a lower type, is more gene- 
rally perfect than anywhere else, and no- 
where can we find better images of the 
rest of heaven than in a broad expanse 
of flowers. I spoke of box-edgings. We 
used to see these in the little country 
gardens, with paths of crude earth or 
gravel. Nowadays it has been discovered 
that box harbours slugs, and we are be- 
ginning to have beds with tiled borders, 
whilst the walks are made of asphalt ! 
For a pleasure-ground in Dante's Inferno 
such materials might be suitable. 



137 



II 



Oil Gardeners^ Flowers 

I THINK that the question left from 
last chapter will be most advan- 
tageously treated in a somewhat 
more extended form. So we will . 
now inquire into the mischief which is 
done to taste by a too exclusive atten- 
tion to highly cultivated plants. A flower 
in its natural state, as for instance the 
Primrose or Buttercup, will generally con- 
sist of the following elements : an outer 
ring, green and leaf-like, which is called 
the calyx, and an inner ring, usually 
coloured, the corolla. These are but the 
floral envelopes, and either of them may 
be modified in all manner of ways, — 
being coloured, colourless (which in bo- 
tanical language means green), or alto- 
gether wanting. Within them lies the 
true flower, composed of the thread-like, 
pin - headed stamens, and the central 
organs, or pistils, which afterwards ripen 

13S 



On Gardeners' Flowers 

into fruit. Now each of these parts, 
stamen, pistil, or petal, essentially is 
nothing but an altered form of leaf, a 
leaf as it were half nourished. And 
under favourable circumstances, with an 
increased supply of food, their forms can 
readily be changed. The stamens and 
pistils become petals, the petals them- 
selves increase in size and number, and 
we have what is called a double flower. 
And the cultivator usually considers a 
flower most perfect when he has suc- 
ceeded in making it double, of extra- 
ordinary size, and of what he regards as 
the most perfect shape and colour. At 
least, he then has done his utmost, and 
the worth of the product is determined 
too much by the labour and skill which 
it has cost. But gains of this sort cannot 
possibly be unattended with loss. Let 
us take, for instance, the double garden 
Roses, and although they are mostly de- 
rived from handsomer foreign species, it 
will be enough for our purpose to com- 
pare them with the common Dog Rose 
of the hedge. Here, then, in the garden 
flower the shape is truly magnificent. 
There are the countless large, soft, fra- 
grant petals, nestling round so closely into 
the fulness of that deep warm bosom, 

139 



Flowers and Gardens 

and with a colour often scarce less ex- 
quisite, which sinks into the deep central 
dimple with a glowing blush, like a 
sunset into the clouds. Then turn to 
the Moss Rose, and see how deliciously 
the opening tints of the bud, like the 
face of an awakening beauty, look forth 
from their nest of thick green viscous 
moss. It would be difficult to adduce better 
instances of what cultivation can achieve. 
But let us contrast these with the Dog- 
Rose. In the first place, we find that 
in the garden plants the long arched 
shoots have disappeared, which stretch 
high over the hedge, or, descending, 
trail down their fragrant burden into 
the shady lanes below, within easy reach 
of every passer-by. Beautiful are they, 
close at hand ! Beautiful in the distance 
when the hedges are everywhere breaking 
forth into the creamy foam of elder 
blossom, picked out with these showery 
touches of pink ! Now such a free dis- 
play of the general form of the Rose is 
evidently impossible in a garden. The 
plant must be cut down to the shape of 
the compacter standard, or else be dis- 
posed upon trellis- work. In either case 
its freedom is restrained, and even the 
freedom of trellis-work is incompatible 

140 



On Gardeners' Flowers 

with the full perfection of the blossom. 
Next we will look at the blossom, for 
that is the point which I would princi- 
pally consider. In the wild plant you 
may at first greatly miss the full sub- 
stantial form of the double Rose, and 
the range of pink colours may also be 
less. Possibly, therefore, your first im- 
pression will be that the flower seems 
thin, loose, and weak. But you will 
begin to see presently that this is only 
the effect of the contrast. You cannot 
point out any real defect — one thing 
that could be altered to advantage. 
Every part, as you examine it, seems 
precise in aim, and well calculated to 
set off the rest, and in essential respects 
there is a far wider range of contrast 
in the flower itself The soft petal 
bosom, it is true, is gone, but look at 
the delicate garland of countless stamens 
which replaces it. In the one case 
there is nothing but calyx and petals, 
the same thing being again and again 
repeated. In the other a new set of 
elements is introduced, and elements of 
extreme significance, for they vary ex- 
ceedingly in all different species of plants, 
and generally the greatest pains are be- 
stowed to give them prominence and 

141 



Flowers and Gardens 



beauty. And observe what deep mean- 
ing they throw into the aspect of the 
Rose, giving it that expression of peace- 
ful dreamy rest, something of which, 
though varied in a hundred ways, is 
common in blossoms where the stamens 
are numerous, as, for instance, we may 
often discern it in the Rock Rose and 
Ranunculaceous orders. Now I have 
here made a contrast the most unfavour- 
able that could be thought of for my pur- 
pose. I have taken one of the gardener's 
noblest flowers, which has a dignity of 
form united with a significance of ex- 
pression, such as cannot be met with 
in any other double flower, and yet I 
think it must be felt that in the garden 
plant a very great deal has been lost, 
and furthermore that this loss is of im- 
mense importance/ 

1 The finest Dog-Roses — I mean those which are the 
deepest pink — in many respects far surpass in colour the 
double Garden Roses. In the first place, their blush is 
almost unrivalled in the maiden softness of its glow. 
Then observe through what a wide range of harmonies 
we are led — outermost you see this sweet glowing pink, 
then a circle which is almost white, then the rich orange 
of the stamens, and finally a green disc in the centre, all 
these hues melting into and supporting each other with a 
softness and beauty indescribable. Can we meet with 
anything like this in the Garden Roses ? But the force 
of the effect does not depend upon colour alone. If you 
look at the Dog-Rose with half-closed eyes, and fancy 

142 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



But study the single Rose as I may/' 
you perhaps tell me, I cannot like it 
much after the double one. I think it 
wants body, it seems loose and weak, 
and I really care little for it. My feeling 
is altogether so different when I come 
to the double Rose from the single. 
These little points you mention, the 
stamens and the pistils, never enter my 
head for a moment ; I do not feel the 
want of them, they are wholly forgotten 
in that luxuriant fulness of beauty. Does 
not this prove the absolute superiority 
of the double flower, seeing that I feel 
no loss in it, and that it gives me all 
which is essential for my pleasure ? 
By no means. The one thing really 
proved is this, that your taste is most 

for a moment that those alternating bands of pink, white, 
and orange are but changes in the tints of the corolla, 
you will find that their value is half lost. The effect of 
the stamens and pistils, and the highest value of their 
colour, depends upon their being guz^e unlike the petals 
in make^ being quite new and dissimilar structures. It 
should also be remembered that double Roses are some- 
what difficult to find perfect. A well-formed Cabbage 
Rose, and especially, perhaps, a Moss Rose, will serve 
to illustrate what I have said in the text. Here the 
petals fold closely over one another, so that we get a 
solid rotundity of form, which is too often frittered away 
in those blossoms where the petals are erecter and their 
concentric rings more open. The best of this latter 
class are very good indeed, but the worse ones ex- 
ceedingly poor. 

143 



Flowers and Gardens 



seriously injured. You cannot believe that 
the work of God is faulty here, and that 
the Wild Rose is an imperfect creation.^ 
You never would have thought it so if 
you had seen it before you saw the double 
flower. With you it is only faulty by 
comparison. So that here is a pure, 
noble, and, as all men of right feeling 
will tell you, a perfect work of its kind, 
in which you can take no pleasure, 
because to you it seems weak and faulty. 
Now, to speak my own feelings, though 
in turning to the Garden Rose I cannot 
feel it faulty any more than you do, I 
soon find that I miss something there ; 
that is, I should soon be wearied if I 
had none but such Roses as these, and 
was absolutely debarred from the com- 
plete wild ones. And do you not see 
the reason of this, viz., that the beauties 
of the cultivated Rose are more especially 
of that sensuous striking kind which can 
hardly be overlooked, and are apt to 
veil in their blaze the simpler and less 
obtrusive, though more deeply satisfying, 

1 Whether God ever purposely makes flowers defective 
is quite another question. But such instances are cer- 
tainly exceptional. And the ground on which the single 
Rose is here condemned would condemn the large 
majority of our most beautiful single flowers upon the 
general principle of their construction. 

144 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



charms of the Wild Rose? But some 
of our double Roses have their stamens 
and pistils left to them." They have, 
and in trimming betwixt single and double 
they have lost the excellences of both. 
Double flowers are often good and highly 
valuable, but in nearly every instance 
that I can call to mind the half-way be- 
twixt single and double is a thorough 
failure. The multiplied petals have de- 
stroyed the simplicity of the single, whilst 
they cannot give the full form of the 
double blossom, and the stamens are often 
more or less disarranged and broken, 
and in any case such petals must make 
them worthless. From this general con- 
demnation I should except the half-double 
Columbine, where the many rows of 
petals fit together into a very elegant 
bonnet shape. The peculiar structure 
in a flower like this prevents much of 
the usual mischief.^ What, then, is the 
general conclusion to which I would 
lead ? I would say that the doubling 
of a blossom, whatever advantages may 
accrue from it, tends on the whole to 

^ An approach to half- double flowers may some- 
times be found in Nature in such types as the Cactus, 
where the petals are very numerous, and in several rows ; 
but the arrangement is much less beautiful than the more 
common kind. 

145 K 



Flowers and Gardens 



destroy individuality, to sweep away the 
differences between flowers, and to bring 
them all down to uniformity ; and worst 
of all, it detracts from the life of the 
expression. The stamens and pistils, 
which are half the character of the flower, 
which are as the very eyes in the human 
countenance, are removed to make room 
for more showy colour, and for a fuller 
and more massive, but as a whole inferior, 
form. For we should pause before saying 
that any of these gains is a gain in the 
highest sense.^ 

How rich is the crimson of the double 
Peony — how delicious to wander from 
fold to fold of those innumerable petals, 
almost as if amongst the clouds, and see 
how the ever-changeful tints deepen and 
graduate between them ! Do I blame 
the gardener for creating this? Not at 
all, but I would have you observe what 
has been lost. The single Peony had 
not that lavish wealth of crimson, that 
wide play of a single hue, but in true 
splendour it surpassed. For the quantity 
of its crimson was determined by a given 
purpose, was carefully arranged and ac- 
curately proportioned so as to contrast 
with the central crown. The one blossom 

1 See Note 7 at the end of the chapter. 
146 



On Gardeners' Flowers 

gives a rich sensuous pleasure which 
steeps the soul as in a bath ; the other 
a pleasure of a much higher kind, and 
embracing far wider compass. Colour, it 
has been said, is life— that which gives 
vitality to form. It exists not only for 
itself, but to carry out an object. And 
the colour of the single Peony most beau- 
tifully does this. The actual range, too, 
of colour, as generally happens, is much 
wider than in the double flower, for the 
orange and green of the stamens and 
pistils are superadded to the crimson — 
not perhaps those oranges and greens 
best calculated to show off separately, 
but those best adapted to the particular 
effect here required, to light up the parts 
by striking contrast, and to give the look 
of a living thing. In the double Peony, 
on the contrary, the less brilliant colours 
are refused. There must be nothing in- 
ferior to crimson. And we can have any 
quantity — the more the better ; for there 
is here no nice balance to be preserved, 
no form to be set off, but that of a large 
round ball, massive and handsome enough, 
but by no means highly individualised. 
And what is the consequence ? The 
fully-opened flower of the single Peony 
is like the countenance of a living crea- 

147 



Flowers and Gardens 



ture ; that of the double has a form so 
vague and featureless that we might easily 
forget that it was a flower at all, and 
think that we were looking at a magni- 
ficent bunch of delicately coloured ribbons. 
Yet when I speak of colour being sub- 
ordinated to a purpose in the single flower, 
I do not mean that it is in anywise of 
less importance. Colour is nowhere more 
brilliant and precious than in flowers, but 
the best effects must be got by judicious 
use, and not by lavish exuberance.^ 

In every instance where we have seen 
a flower only in its double state, we feel 
to know little about it, for it appears but 
half a flower. There is a plant common 
in gardens which I have been told is a 
species of Corchorus.^ I like what I know 
of it, and would gladly make its nearer 

1 I would not deny that the double flower may at times 
gain greatly in colour taken as a whole. Look, for in- 
stance, at the double pink Hepatica, which appears in 
February and March, gleaming like a little amethyst 
amongst the Crocuses, the bright clear hue being doubly 
delightful from its rarity at that early season. Yet, after 
all, the pink and white Hepaticas are but inferior varieties 
of the blue, and no double modification of any of them is 
able to equal that. It will be seen too, that in even the 
single pink Hepatica the ordinary rule applies — it has 
more life expression than the double. 

2 [The plant is the double Kerria japonica. It was 
called Corchorus till the single form was found, and the 
mistake was discovered. Kerria and Corchorus are of 
two quite distinct families. — H. N. E.] 

148 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



acquaintance, but the double blossoms 
hold me quite aloof, and it seems little 
better than a stranger. Notwithstanding, 
in the double Rose and Peony, whatever 
may be the loss, the gain is in some re- 
spects great. There are other flowers, 
however, in which the case is widely 
different. Look, for instance, at the blos- 
som of a well-grown single Hollyhock, 
with its central column of white mealy 
stamens, around which the bees are for 
ever digging and burrowing, and observe 
how beautifully this column completes the 
deep bowl-like corolla, and then stand 
apart and see how by these columns the 
whole spire is illuminated, every part of 
it brought out into clear relief, as by a 
lamp placed in the centre of each flower. 
No mere alteration of colour could ever 
produce this effect. It is only to be got 
by an essential change of structure in 
the parts of the flower. Now would you 
think it possible that any one would be 
willing to throw away these beautiful 
stamens,^ and have the corolla choked up 
by a blind unmeaning mass of spongy 

1 [In most double Hollyhocks the stamens remain ; for 
the double flower is a collection of single flowers within 
one involucrum, and so differs from the double Peony, in 
which the stamens are converted into petals. — H. N. E.] 

149 



Flowers and Gardens 



petal ? ^ Yet such is actually the case. 
And once, when I went into the market 
to ask for single Hollyhocks, the gar- 
dener, civil as he was, seemed absolutely 
taken by surprise. ''Single Hollyhocks! 
No, sir, I wouldn't keep such things ! " 

The common Garden Anemone is an- 
other case in point : never was the effect 
of central organs better seen than in the 
single flower, where the stamens cluster 
so exquisitely around and into that black 
bee-like crown. Now the Anemone has 
some peculiar charm which excites in me 
an almost indescribable rapture, and that 
crown is as it were the very culmination 
of the whole. And I cannot but think 
that here, if not in the Hollyhock, the 
double flower which the gardeners so 
much prefer will be absolutely painful, 
from its inferiority, to any man of right 
feeling, who has the means of obtaining 
the single one. Now the effect of such 
false principles fully carried out may be 
seen in the taste of the common people. 
They will generally, under any circum- 
stances, prefer the highly cultivated flower 

^ Unmeaning, that is, in comparison with what it re- 
places. The blossoms of the double Hollyhock have a 
full, noble form, but one can never heartily enjoy them 
from a sense of what is missing. 

ISO 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



to the simple one, just for that one quality 
of bigness and plumpness. In the same 
way, most vulgar people admire great red- 
faced women, and judge of the beauty of 
prize pigs and oxen by their size. 

There is the double Snowdrop — on the 
whole, I should think, the most ungainly 
flower we have. All the characteristic 
beauty of the Snowdrop, the delicate cur- 
vatures of the petals, the contrast betwixt 
the light, thin, flexible outer petals, and 
the inner, short, stout, unyielding cup, 
have wholly disappeared, in order that 
that light graceful form may be stuffed 
out as you would stuff a pillow-case, with 
a bunch of strips arranged like a pen- 
wiper. The gain here is positively 
nothing, for fulness in the Snowdrop is 
a real deformity. Yet the common people 
often say they would not give a straw for 
Snowdrops if they are not double ones. 
There are many other double flowers 
which are utterly bad, without any re- 
deeming quality, such as double Violets, 
Narcissuses, Tulips, and Nasturtiums. 

Lastly in double flowers how the shape 
of the petals is destroyed ! There is natu- 
rally a wide difference in form between 
the petals of a Saxifrage and those of a 
Cruciferous plant. Look, for instance, at 

151 



Flowers and Gardens 



a single Stock or Wallflower. The broad 
coloured blade of the petal runs inwards 
horizontally to the very centre of the 
blossom, so as to press in close upon the 
stamens, and then turns downwards with 
a sudden bend into a long invisible claw. 
Now take a Saxifrage ; most of the com- 
mon tufted kinds would do, or the large 
pink Crassifolia of the gardens, or Saxi- 
fraga granulata. Here the petal form is 
entirely different, sloping down gradually 
like a funnel, and leaving the centre of the 
flower widely open. Now, in the double 
flower all this character is lost from the 
centre of the blossom being choked up, 
and the clawed and unclawed petals look 
pretty much alike. 

We have taken double flowers as the 
furthest point to which the art of gardening 
carries us, but in highly cultivated single 
flowers v/e find the same tendencies, 
although in a less degree. There is the 
same general disposition to bring every- 
thing to the largest possible size and a full 
rounded shape. And the course here fol- 
lowed is in the main undoubtedly the right 
one. But whilst it creates much beauty, 
it is still attended with losses, though 
of far less importance than those I have 
just described. Thus our Wild Pansies 

152 



On Gardeners' Flowers 

have an extremely irregular corolla. The 
four upper petals point upwards, though 
perhaps not always quite so markedly as 
is described in botanical books, and tend to 
a more or less oblong form. Now these 
characteristic peculiarities in the petals, 
with the very characteristic and beautiful 
effect which arises from them, are com- 
pletely rounded away in the Garden Pansy ; 
its shape is nearly circular. The gain is 
here of the highest value, for the outline, 
colour, and expression in a good Garden 
Pansy are all alike most beautiful, so that 
the flower is sound as a work of art ; but 
still its advantages are necessarily attended 
with the almost complete destruction of 
the original character of the plant. Some- 
thing of the same sort will be seen in the 
greenhouse Geraniums, or, more strictly 
speaking, Pelargoniums. The marked ir- 
regularities of the corolla, which every 
one must have noticed in the smaller 
species, and which are common to all alike, 
in greater or less degree, often get well- 
nigh obliterated in the artificial fulness of 
the larger and handsomer plants. The 
improvements are still more valuable and 
beautiful than in the Pansy, but, as in the 
Pansy, much of the natural shape is inev- 
itably lost in producing them. We may 

153 



Flowers and Gardens 



trace this even in the Tom Thumb Ge- 
ranium and its larger garden varieties. 
And so in other instances. The irregular- 
ities, the narrowness, the unsymmetrical 
arrangements of Nature, disappear to 
some extent in the highly cultivated plant, 
and a different character is introduced. 
Although large size is a very important 
object, it must not be too heedlessly sought 
after. I have known writers speak as if 
beauty could be estimated by tape measure 
— the improvements made in the Anemone 
being tested by the fact that the diameter 
of the blossom had been increased from 
one inch to six. But what are we the better 
for Anemones six inches across ? The 
mere fact of their being so large would be 
sufficient proof that they had been spoilt. 

The dangers resulting from too great 
love of double flowers are sufficiently 
obvious from what I have said already. 
Yet it must not be thought that I am 
trying to depreciate the just merits of the 
class. Though as a whole inferior to the 
single blossoms, their superiority in indi- 
vidual points is often undeniable. The 
best double forms, like those of the Peony 
and the Rose, have a fulness and majesty 
which cannot but be deeply felt, resulting 
from that broad and massive rotundity 

154 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



than which no other single quality can be 
more immediately impressive. And, in 
addition to this, we have the gorgeous 
colour, spread over a wider surface than 
in the single, and often with infinitely 
greater command over some particular 
hue. But, spite of all this, though the 
double flower both may and ought to 
yield us much enjoyment, I think just 
feeling will prefer, for the reasons already 
given, to anchor permanently on the 
single. The double may be handsomer, 
and in some respects more dignified, but 
we feel it to be less of a companion. 

And excessive attention to highly culti- 
vated single flowers is not without its 
hazards. Do we not often, whilst ad- 
miring those large, broadly developed 
forms with their splendid colours, feel a 
want of something more quiet and re- 
served ? To take, for instance, that 
magnificent blue Larkspur, which the 
gardeners call Formosum,^ and which has 
become one of the commonest kinds from 
its extraordinary beauty, we cannot help 
feeling a sort of excess, a want of suffi- 
cient sobriety in the flower, which some- 
what mars our pleasure. To give a 
parallel from poetry. Few critics would 

Delphinium formosum. — H. N. E.] 



Flowers and Gardens 

find fault with Keats' ''St. Agnes' Eve." 
We are glad to obtain such a glorious 
vision at any cost. And yet here and 
there we find its beauty almost oppressive, 
in that continual effort after the utmost 
possible luxury of sensuous appeal How 
the richness of the spiced dainties, of the 
dishes, the cloth, in fact, of everything in 
the room, is pressed forward ! We feel 
constantly as if it would have been impos- 
sible for the poet to carry this a single 
hair's - breadth further. It is not so in 
Tennyson's Recollections of the Arabian 
Nights," and the richer style can hardly 
be considered perfectly healthy. 

Now I know a Larkspur far inferior in 
beauty to Formosum, to which it is a 
relief to turn, because the colour is so 
chastely used, and every portion of it is 
made of such good account. Look, too, 
at the Gentianella, the most glorious blue 
we have. One touch of the tint, and only 
one, but how it makes us long for more ! 
If we could fill the tube with the enchant- 
ing colour, and spread it over the dark 
outside, should we really find that we had 
gained anything ? It is just in this 
severity, this giving full value to all the 
colour used, that highly cultivated flowers 
are oftenest defective. Perhaps we should 

156 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



rather say, that their most distinctive ex- 
cellence lies in another direction. 

The more natural flowers exhibit gene- 
rally a self-imposed restraint, and reser- 
vation of power : they seem making no 
effort to be beautiful. The highly cul- 
tivated flower will often impress us too 
much with this idea that it is doing its 
utmost, and that it could not well be 
larger, nor fuller, nor its colours in the 
least more showy. ^ Consequently, in the 
largest Auriculas, Wallflowers, Azaleas, 
Petunias, we feel a certain laxity, as if 
the form were almost breaking from its 
bounds. By keeping too much, then, to 
these garden flowers, you will be tempted 
to lose sight of the value of narrowness 
in shape, and of modest severity in colour- 
ing, and be continually wishing, as the 
gardener generally does, to see everything 
carried on from fuller to fuller, and so to 
the perfect consummation of fulness in the 
double blossom. 

We may say that the gardener s taste 
bears a certain analogy to that of Rubens. 

^ Just as in looking at the Farnese Hercules you say, 
" What a noble figure ! Could any one imagine a frame 
more muscular than this?" But no such thought ever 
enters your head whilst you contemplate the superb 
proportions of the Theseus (Hercules ?) of the Elgin 
marbles. 



Flowers and Gardens 

Rubens was a master of amazing power, 
and it lay easily within his compass to 
give form of a very high order, along with 
much dignity and pathos, if not absolute 
beauty, of feature. But in general the 
effect of his forms depends rather upon 
sensuous fulness than upon fineness of 
proportion and delicately moulded outline. 
This is most obviously seen in his women. 
You cannot deny that they often have 
magnificent figures, as, for instance, the 
goddesses in the Judgment of Paris," 
in the National Gallery, and still more in 
other cases where there is loose and 
flowing drapery, but the> beauty is com- 
paratively of a low and sensuous type. 
There is something very different in the 
figures of the best antiques, or in the 
heads of Leonardo da Vinci. And we 
may go yet higher, so as to speak of ex- 
pression, and compare these women of 
Rubens' with Raphaels St. Catherine, or 
with that Madonna by Perugino in the 
National Gallery, around whom the still 
landscape, with its sacred light, seems to 
gather like a glory. In these pictures 
there is nothing superficially attractive, 
except the colouring of the latter ; the 
figures are somewhat heavy, the hands 
large and careless, but does not the soul 

158 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



within them shine brighter and brighter 
as we gaze, and will not every painter 
allow the superiority of such beauty ? 
Even so it is with many a simple field- 
flower. We scarcely know what its beauty 
comes from, what renders it so dear, so 
full of deeper meaning, and yet sooner 
than lose it we would part with some of 
the choicest flowers of the garden, and 
many a wild one which far surpasses it in 
every outward advantage. 

We may note another point of compari- 
son. One of Rubens' highest excellences 
is colour, a very showy colour, — in fact, 
always toned up to a certain standard of 
floridity. But is Rubens, with all his gor- 
geousness and prodigality, ever ranked 
with the very greatest colourists? Now, 
our gardeners very closely resemble him 
here. 

In conclusion, then, I think that the 
gardener does wrong in too frequently 
driving out the single flower by the double, 
especially when, as in double Anemones 
and Hollyhocks, the gain is very paltry in 
comparison with the loss. He is wrong, 
moreover, when he creates what can only 
be felt as deeply degraded flowers, like the 
doubleTulips, Narcissuses, and Violets, these 
last being only valued for their superior 

159 



Flowers and Gardens 



fragrance ; or when he aims at great size 
without due regard to its effect upon the 
highest beauty of the plant ; or when he 
seeks after tawdry variations of colour. 
He acts as a true artist, on the other hand, 
in creating those full, rounded. Rubens- 
like forms, whenever they are really noble ; 
or in obtaining any worthy gain, whether 
by increasing the size of the blossoms or 
intensifying their natural brilliancy of 
colour, even if at some cost to the perfect 
harmonies of the plant ; or in creating such 
strange loveliness as that of those double 
Carnations, where the edge of each creamy 
petal is drawn with a narrow line of pink, 
all the rest of the blossom being left as 
spotless as the snow ; or lastly, in improv- 
ing, and here with scarcely any drawback, 
the various kinds of fruit. In these and a 
hundred other such cases the gardener well 
deserves the gratitude of every lover of 
flowers. 

But then comes our caution. Whilst 
looking at these splendid flowers, let us 
never be so far dazzled as to forget that 
they are for the most part highly artificial 
products. Much of their beauty is pro- 
duced at the expense of native character ; 
and the cultivator, perhaps necessarily 
overvaluing the changes effected by his 

i6o 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



art, learns to fix attention too much upon 
beauties of one special type. Hence, with- 
out due balance, we may easily get to 
underrate all flower beauty to which this 
artificial standard is inapplicable, and per- 
haps come to dislike every form of that 
wild looser sort of vegetation which is 
wholly excluded from the garden. More- 
over, it is not well to be too constantly 
dwelling on splendour. We need some- 
thing more sober for our habitual food. 
For all these reasons, if we would avoid 
injury to the taste, we must make wild 
flowers our habitual study. True appre- 
ciation of flowers, as I have said before, 
can only be learnt in the fields. Accustom 
yourself to contemplate those quiet and 
unselected charms, look again and again 
even at the most insignificant till you are 
able to recognise their loveliness, and then 
you will know what true excellence means, 
and be in no danger of being led away by 
meretricious qualities. The pure works 
of God will give you the best criterion for 
judging the works of man. In all this, 
botany will assist you much, by making 
you universal, drawing your attention to 
small and great alike, and compelling you 
to take note of a thousand peculiarities 
which you would otherwise overlook. But, 

l6l L 



Flowers and Gardens 



above all things, scorn nothing. Never 
fear to admire old-fashioned flowers because 
they are spoken of with contempt. Never 
fear to look for yourself ; to form, and 
slowly, if necessary, your own opinion. 
Scorn, in fact, of anything save moral evily 
is perhaps the basest passion known to 
man. Nothing is further removed from 
the character of a true-hearted Christian 
gentleman (and two sorts of gentlemen 
can hardly be said to exist), or to use a 
vulgar phrase, there is nothing in the 
world so snobbish. There are many wide 
differences betwixt the prince and the 
peasant, but in whatever rank you meet a 
snob, habitual scorn of others, or of any of 
the works of God, is the infallible mark 
by which you know him.^ 

Perhaps you will say that my disparage- 
ment of double flowers is the result of my 
being a botanist, Well, and what if this 
be true ? The botanist chooses his pursuit 
from strong instinctive love for flowers, 
and so is surely more likely to judge 

1 [With this fine denunciation of the scorner we may 
join Daudet's account : " Mes amis, ne meprisons per- 
sonne. Le mepris est la ressource des parvenus, des 
poseurs, des laiderons et des sots, le masque ou s'abrite 
la nullite, quelquefois la gredinerie, et que, dispense 
d'esprit, de jugement, de bonte. Tous les bossus sont 
meprisants ; tous les nez tors se froncent, et dedaignent 
quand ils rencontrent un nez droit." — Tartarin sur les 
Alpes, c. \.—H, N, E^^ 

162 



On Gardeners' Flowers 

rightly than another man. I admit that 
there may be some botanists who are 
nothing more than hard-headed collectors 
of names, to whom plants are but hooks 
on which labels may be hung. But 
botanists of another class have in this 
respect been much misrepresented, because 
they do not, or perhaps cannot, speak out 
their thoughts. That man who appears 
only to be seeking after rare or novel 
species, who may never seem to notice or 
be interested in mere scientific arrange- 
ments, is perhaps tremblingly alive to the 
beauty of what he finds ; and the beauty 
is of more importance than the science, as 
the heart is nobler than the head. You 
may not be able to see what good such an 
one may get by running on from form to 
form, as eagerly as if seeking after gold, and 
perhaps he himself could not tell you ; but 
if God thought it worth His while to plan 
these forms, it is surely not beneath the 
dignity of man to study them. In short, 
then, a botanist's love for simple natural 
flowers is generally the evidence of an 
uncorrupted taste. He has had absolutely 
nothing to mislead him, for his original 
motive in the study can seldom be other 
than the pure inspiration of love ; and the 
study itself is large and wide, embracing 
without any exclusiveness great and small, 

163 



Flowers and Gardens 

fantastic and beautiful alike, yet all of the 
truest workmanship. He takes them just 
as he finds them, blended together just as 
God saw fit that they should grow. The 
feelings of a man like this may possibly be 
cold, but it is hardly likely that they should 
be radically false. But does not the 
botanist prefer the single flower because 
in the double the natural connections are 
undistinguishable ? No doubt that he 
does. For this is no barren mechanical 
question. It means not only that we can- 
not number the stamens and pistils in a 
double flower, but that nearly all which 
distinguished it from other flowers is gone. 
So legibly is relationship written upon the 
features that the practised botanist can 
generally guess a strange plant's family 
(natural order) at a glance, petal, stamen, 
and every other part being in some degree 
characteristic ; but in double flowers he 
knows little except from the calyx or the 
herbage, or something that is left unal- 
tered. Now, of course, the beauty is 
degraded in proportion to this loss of 
character. 

Note i 

A highly cultivated Pansy or Geranium 
of necessity loses much of its original 

164 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



character in the rounding out of the 
petals. Now as native character is al- 
most always beautiful and impressive, 
its loss must be reckoned serious. But, 
on the other hand, we must take into 
account what the plant has gained both 
in character and beauty. See how many 
new elements have arisen in the highly 
cultivated shape, which were almost or 
altogether undiscernible in the wild flower. 
See how many old elements have acquired 
new emphasis and power, which perhaps 
had but little meaning till they were em- 
bodied in a fuller form. And where 
cultivation even seems to have diluted 
the wild shape, a certain boldness and 
dignity come in to atone for it. And 
thus the balance of losses and gains is, 
in many plants, extremely difficult to 
settle. You feel that each has its in- 
trinsic excellences. The round outline 
of the cultivated Pansy is unmeaning as 
compared with that of the wild flower, 
whilst the wild flower looks poor beside 
the garden one. Yet in laying great 
stress upon the importance of character, 
it must not be thought that any character 
is valuable which depends upon mere 
weakness or deficiency. Difference of 
character must point to a different style 

i6s 



Flowers and Gardens 



of beauty, or it becomes most wholly 
worthless, and real gain in beauty must 
atone for any such loss. But why is the 
gardener in such risk of learning to dis- 
like the special characters of the unculti- 
vated flower ? Simply because his labour 
is for the most part directed to efface 
them, to supplant that style of beauty 
by the opposite. Yet it is not always 
so, as we see from the hothouse Orchids. 

Note 2 

The gardener, then, is an artist who 
interprets Nature by showing her full 
capabilities, by carrying out any beautiful 
tendency whatsoever of a plant to its 
fullest consummation. It is a work not 
only of evolution, but of change. He 
sometimes appears principally to be en- 
larging the native form, and displaying 
it to better advantage ; but he frequently 
must alter it altogether, as in the double 
flowers, and replace it by something new. 
His creations are, therefore, often neces- 
sarily very one-sided, and apt to be much 
influenced by caprices of novelty and 
fancy, so that it is well to counterbalance 
their effect upon the mind by an habitual 
study of wild plants. But it is only when 

166 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



he tempts us, any more than he necessarily 
must, to narrow down our tastes, or wil- 
fully leads us to prefer the lower to the 
higher, or carries out evil tendencies as 
to faulty colouring or shape, that we must 
hold him justly to blame. 

But with reference to losses from 
cultivation, is the gardener always neces- 
sarily one-sided ? May he not raise a 
plant, without material loss of any kind, 
to a higher order of beauty ? Theoreti- 
cally it appears by no means easy to say. 
Even if it were a mere question of size, 
can a plant be quite perfect that is 
designed for being two feet high, if it 
can be raised without any loss to three 
or four? How should we like our Snow- 
drops and Harebells to be of twice the 
present size ? On the contrary, if the 
plant is improved by enlargement of the 
blossom, with or without corresponding 
diminution of the foliage, would not this 
show that the blossom had originally been 
too small? It might be answered, of 
course, that some forms have dwindled 
or deteriorated, and may be restored by 
giving them the advantages they require. 
But this will not be the usual case. In 
general, where the wild plant seems really 
inferior, we shall probably find that the 

167 



Flowers and Gardens 

inferior form is best suited to its native 
home, and is the more beautiful of the 
two in the place where it was intended 
to grow. Nevertheless we may justly 
say that cultivation has raised it when 
the question of this local relationship is 
set aside. In itself we do not prefer the 
little stunted yew-tree, and yet it looks 
better high up upon the mountain crags 
than would the finest growth of the valley. 
I think that the Meadow Cowslips, with 
all their irregularities (I do not mean the 
irregularities seen in actually bad speci- 
mens, with perhaps three flowers to a 
head), would be ill replaced by better- 
grown ones ; and this could hardly be 
understood from seeing the plants in a 
garden where the original significance of 
their peculiarities is no longer to be seen. 
The loose, straggling appearance of many 
a weed is very valuable in the hedge or 
on pieces of waste ground. Every mass 
of weeds has its compacter plants as well 
as its looser, and it is the blending of 
the two which makes the beauty. I have 
already pointed out how the Anth^iscus 
sylvestris redeems from flatness the long 
levels of the mowing grass. Alter it in 
any respect, even by enlarging its flowers, 
and you would injure it, — the loose misty 

i68 



On Gardeners' Flowers 

effect would be destroyed. And how 
should we like the meadow grass itself 
to have fuller ears, and to grow as stout 
as corn ? Yet if such plants were in a 
garden, their defects would be real ones, 
through having lost their meaning, and 
we should thank cultivation for removing 
them. Now, to speak more practically, be 
all this as it may, the effects of cultivation 
seem often greatly beneficial, without pro- 
ducing any material loss. They add fresh 
beauty to the flower, whilst detracting 
but little from its native stores. And 
yet, in making a fair estimate, we should 
remember that it is often difficult to be 
sure that what we know as the wild plant 
is the genuine thing, and not some stunted 
variety. For instance, that wretched little 
Pansy of our corn-fields, in which the 
petals are almost abortive, is botanically 
identical with the real Wild Pansy, which 
in favourable situations is a very pretty 
flower. And I had long been in the 
habit of setting down Lamium amplexi- 
caule as remarkably unattractive, apart 
from its botanical interest. But I was 
surprised to find that Anne Pratt con- 
sidered it the prettiest of the genus, and 
I see what she means from the figure 
she gives. Again, we must never be too 

169 



Flowers and Gardens 

sure that we have not overlooked some 
important loss, and the caution is more 
needed because the improvements will 
always be showy. I think, then, we may 
assert these three positions : Firstly, 
there are many plants, like Broom, Gorse, 
Foxglove, Hawthorn, Columbine, which 
seem to be absolutely perfect, in which 
it would scarcely be possible to conceive 
of an improvement which would raise 
the plant as a whole. You may produce 
new beauty by varying them, by making 
the Hawthorn scarlet, or the Foxglove 
white, but you cannot actually raise them. 
Secondly, there is another set of plants 
in which the improvements from cultiva- 
tion are so marked as to be unmistakable, 
and seemingly unattended with any loss 
worth mentioning. Such are Wallflowers, 
many Larkspurs, the large varieties of 
the Dog s-Tooth Violet and Grape Hya- 
cinth, our ordinary fruits and many kitchen 
vegetables, as rhubarb, fennel, or aspa- 
ragus, and probably corn of all kinds. 
Indeed, never could the advantages of 
cultivation be better seen than in our 
fruits. In the plum, the apple, the pear, 
what a variety of noble character has 
been created ! Nevertheless, it must be 
remembered that in some flowers, as the 

170 



On Gardeners' Flowers 

Wallflower, still higher cultivation will 
finally alter the shape, producing that 
large lax type of petal to which we have 
already alluded, as one in which the form 
seems almost escaping from its bounds ; 
though even this change may be valuable 
as the source of much new beauty. 
Thirdly, there are plants in which, though 
the flower may be greatly bettered by 
cultivation, there is clear and serious loss, 
as in the Pansies and Geraniums from 
which we originally started. 

Note 3 

But is the work of Nature always per- 
fect ? Not always of the highest type of 
beauty certainly, for that was never in- 
tended. And there are many instances 
in which it is difficult to see the reason 
of the imperfection. What a repulsive 
smell the Daffodil has ! You would have 
thought that something would have been 
selected more consistent with the appear- 
ance of that lively flower. It is the same 
with some other of the Narcissuses. And 
there is a species of Fritillary (jF. pyre- 
naica), one of the most graceful of all 
our spring plants, in which the rich varie- 
gated brown would lead us to expect a 

171 



Flowers and Gardens 



sweet sugary or treacly odour, but, on the 
contrary, we find a smell even more dis- 
gusting than the Daffodil's. The Starch 
Grape Hyacinth, too {Ahcscari racemostim), 
remarkable for the fruity hue of its beaded 
blossoms, whose flowers rub together with 
a crisp glassy feel, like that of a bunch of 
Bluebell stalks, when w^e press the spike 
betwixt the fingers, is in this respect the 
same. Why should it be so ? On the 
other hand, there are thousands upon 
thousands of flowers in which the least 
shortcoming of perfect beauty cannot be 
detected by the most critical eye. The 
thorns of the Rose or Thistle are of 
course no imperfections at all, but right 
and very beautiful in their place. 



Note 4 

When any flower has attracted unusual 
attention, as has been the case for the 
last two or three hundred years with the 
Tulip, the cultivator is somewhat at a 
loss for special means of excitement. He 
then becomes a complete sensationalist. 
Sometimes he will try to gain notice by 
gigantic size, the fine vase-like curvatures 
of the Tulip being replaced perhaps by a 
monstrous broadly open cup shape, as 

172 



On Gardeners' Flowers 

seen in Mrs. Loudon's plate Ladies' 
Ornamental Flower Garden, Bulbous 
Plants"). Sometimes he will try by all 
sorts of eccentricity in the markings, 
colours being dashed together without 
any pretence of harmony. And still 
further disturbance may be produced by 
the idiotic freaks of fashion, the shape 
which is right to-day being wrong to- 
morrow, and perhaps right again in twenty 
years to come. Now the Tulip is a flower 
which ill bears to be trifled with. Under 
cultivation it easily becomes stiff and 
gaudy, and the utmost possible care is 
needed to make it look well. The origi- 
nal Tulipa Ges7ieriana I only know from 
plates, and it is unsafe to draw compari- 
sons from these. But the cultivated plant 
with all its splendour is seldom perfectly 
pleasing ; and this is certainly largely due 
to the one-sided modes of training, which 
seek after display alone. All our Tulips 
must be fitted for the show-bed. Now I 
had a garden Tulip this spring which 
greatly impressed me by its severe and 
simple beauty. In the shape this was 
particularly noticeable. The corolla in its 
lower part filled out roundly and delicately 
like an urn, then somewhat contracted 
upwards, and again curved outwards at 

173 



Flowers and Gardens 



the points of the three oyter and narrower 
sepals, thus clearly distinguishing them 
from the three inner broader and blunter 
petals, whose tips were directed inwards. 
The corolla was not large, and therefore 
required no stout stiff stem to support 
it ; the stem had, in fact, just that slight 
amount of curvature which would redeem 
it from the appearance of formality. The 
colour was a fresh honey yellow, beautiful 
in itself, and well adapted to the form. 
It is difficult to recognise species in these 
garden plants ; but I think that this is 
very likely to have been one of the com- 
mon May Tulips amongst which it grew : 
yet in the highest beauty, and in character 
what a difference ! ^ Such flowers may not 
be fitted for display in a bed, but scat- 
tered here and there in twos and threes 
amongst the other plants, they will im- 
press us as no other Tulips can. I believe 
that this kind of Tulip is common in our 
cottage gardens, and therefore I have 
noticed it. 

The cultivated form of Gesneriana is 
often exceedingly fine when well rounded 

1 [The Tulip so accurately described is T. retroflexa^ 
certainly one of the most elegant of the family. The re- 
curved petals suggest a connection with the wild Tulip, 
T. sylvestris, but it is not allied to it, and its origin is 
unknown. — H. N. E.] 

174 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



below, and allowed to curve upwards 
naturally. The waved streaks then assist 
the form. Tulips, too, look much less 
stiff when allowed to send up a sprout or 
two from the principal bulb, and ordinary 
garden Tulips can easily afford to do so. 

Note 5 

One of the very worst symptoms of our 
modern taste is its love of variegated 
foliage. Leaves are the shadow of the 
plant ; their colour needs essentially 
breadth and repose, as a foil to the light 
of the flowers. It is true that Nature 
will now and then give us leaf colouring 
of rare and delicate beauty, like that of 
the Cissus, or many kinds of tinting in 
purple and red ; but still the main effect 
is nearly always quiet and subdued. Now 
look at our summer flower-beds ; look at 
that Scarlet Geranium whose leaf edges 
are broadly buttered round with cream 
colour (I can use no other term which 
will express the vulgarity of the effect) ; 
consider first the harshness of the leaf 
colouring in itself, then its want of relation 
to the form, and finally what a degrada- 
tion this is of the clear, beautiful, and 
restful contrast which we find in the plain 

175 



Flowers and Gardens 

Scarlet Geranium, and then ask yourself 
what that taste can be where this is not 
only tolerated, but admired. We may 
perhaps obtain a really beautiful leaf, like 
that Geranium leaf with variously coloured 
borders in which a coppery tint prevails ; 
but all this is essentially an imitation of 
withering, and wherever such plants come 
in largely, their colour must produce the 
effects of withering, making beds look as 
if they were blighted. But this is only 
one example of the thousand discords 
which are coming into favour now. The 
gardener here has entered a radically 
erroneous path, and there will be little 
but baseness in the results. How often 
do we see the colours of a bed completely 
frittered away amidst contrasts of leaves 
which are spotted and streaked into every 
sort of deformity ! That which is excep- 
tional in Nature is made the rule, the 
rule narrowed down into the exception. 
How can breadth of effect, or anything 
but the utmost frivolity, be possibly gained 
by means of such barbarous plants as 
these ? And some of the large tropical 
Arums [Aracece) of the hothouse, I know 
not whether naturally or as the result of 
art, are as harsh as anything I have 
named, green grounds peppered thickly 

176 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



over with bright red, or tricksily wrought 
out in cream colour. Occasional variega- 
tion in the leaves is now and then pleasing, 
though this can hardly ever be the case 
where plants bear brilliant flowers. Thus 
I like to see the Variegated Holly, or the 
creamy stripes of Ribbon Grass. These 
last are especially beautiful, because fol- 
lowing the form of the leaf, instead of 
breaking it up like the Geranium white- 
wash I have mentioned. But the grass 
has no coloured flowers to spoil. And 
observe, when the berries appear upon the 
Variegated Holly how inferior its effect 
becomes. We wish for the green leaves 
then. Amongst other leaf deformities, 
who has not noticed that hedgehog-leaved 
Holly, where the flat surface of the leaf is 
trained to put forth prickles ? ^ What pos- 
sible beauty can there be in this? High 
cultivation will always have its dangers, a 
tendency to strain after new effects of any 
sort, as witness the abominable colours of 
some of the most highly trained Pansies in 
our markets ; but high cultivation, when once 
started, as in the case of this variegated 
foliage, upon tracks which are radically 
wrong, can only produce evil without end. 

^ [The Hedgehog Holly is not a trained form ; it is a 
wild variety of the Common Holly. — H. N. E.] 

177 M 



Flowers and Gardens 



Note 6 

I will give one instance of Nature's care 
for the look of the stamens and pistils of a 
flower. In the blossom of the Scented 
Violet the stamens form by their conver- 
gence a little orange beak. At the end 
of this beak is the summit of the pistil, a 
tiny speck of green, but barely visible to 
the naked eye. Yet, small as it is, it 
completes the colour of the flower, by 
softening the orange, and we can dis- 
tinctly see that if this mere point were 
removed, there would be imperfection for 
the want of it. 

Note 7 

To any one who looks at the extra- 
ordinary beauty of the best garden Roses, 
at the sweetness and delicacy of the tint- 
ing, the delicious fragrance, and the large 
nobility of form, my remarks, so far as 
applying to them, may at first sight seem 
very rash. And if any exception could 
exist to what I have said, it would certainly 
be found in the Rose. The flower has a 
something almost human about it, — warm, 
breathing, soft as the fairest cheek ; if 

178 



On Gardeners' Flov/ers 

white, no longer snowy like the Narcissus, 
but flushed with hues of animating pink ; 
either flower, white or red, being alike 
symbolical of growing youthful passion. 
Nowhere else has the sensuous in a double 
flower such strength of imaginative appeal. 
But we must remember, — firstly, as to 
sensuous qualities, that we have only made 
comparison with our native hedge Rose, 
and not with the original of the garden 
plant in a single state, and developed by 
cultivation. Secondly, it is admitted that 
the double flower may far excel in par- 
ticular kinds of effect, the various beauties 
of the single being restrained by mutual 
concession to give best effect to the flower 
as a whole. Thus the higher you cultivate 
the common Pink the less has it of ani- 
mated expression : there is, consequently, 
more of this expression in the best double 
Pinks of the cottage garden, least of all in 
the splendid Carnations I have already 
described, which are just like gorgeous 
patterns. Now the best double flowers 
do certainly gain much in dignity, one of 
the highest of all possible qualities. And 
in their own especial kind of dignity the 
single flowers can never vie with them. 
These last can give us the dignity of the 
open empty cup, as we see in the common 

179 



Flowers and Gardens 

Lilies and Water-lilies, but they can never 
fill the cup and expand it into a head, 
because that would spoil the stamens, which 
are the life and light of the whole. Yet 
not even here are the single flowers to be 
considered as driven from the field. What 
they cannot do separately they can when 
united in a mass. The heads of the 
larger Rhododendrons can vie even with 
the double Peonies in majesty, and have, 
besides, that life which the Peony lacks. 
But this kind of dignity is comparatively 
rare amongst single flowers, whilst it is the 
especial boast of the better class of the 
double. The lower double flowers aim 
chiefly at a patterned neatness, as we see 
in the Hepatica, the white Wood Anemone, 
the white Ranunculus, and others. Not- 
withstanding this confession, we must not 
be too hasty, and say that this kind of 
dignity cannot be found at all in the single 
flowers taken separately. There is some- 
thing approaching it in the Iris, and other 
such blossoms where the stamens lie con- 
cealed. Blossoms of this sort more nearly 
approximate to double ones in their effect. 
They give up expression for magnificence, 
and gloriously lovely as they are — for I 
think few plants are lovelier than the Irises 
— we feel here an inferiority to the open 

i8o 



On Gardeners' Flowers 

flowers. But mark particularly how the 
Iris differs from a double blossom, how 
much more preciseness of aim there is in 
the parts, a few grandly managed elements 
most carefully individualised, and how 
comparatively slight is the tendency to 
repetition. In the double flower, on the 
contrary, we are struck by the comparative 
feebleness of plan. There is constant 
repetition, the petals crowded together 
numberless, and with far less care for the 
individuals, which in many cases melt up 
into almost shapeless confusion, and can 
only be looked at in the mass, as in the 
double Tulip and Hollyhock. This marks, 
of course, a certain deterioration of char- 
acter. Whenever, on the contrary, the 
parts are more cared for, they begin to 
give a look of stiffness, because there are 
too many of a similar kind. The Carnation 
and Dahlia, for instance, have much the 
effect of patterns. 

Note 8 

As the result of that wish for large 
size which every gardener approves, we 
find that highly cultivated flowers are apt 
to have a look of weakness. The plant 
impresses us as soft, loose, nerveless, 

i8i 



Flowers and Gardens 

and as certain to be injured by the 
least untoward circumstance. It is often 
unable to stand in its own unassisted 
strength, and needs all kinds of artificial 
protection and support. And this is 
because the healthy balance is destroyed, 
because one part is cultivated out of pro- 
portion to, and therefore to the disad- 
vantage of, the rest. As compared with 
wild plants, it is like some, sleek, fattened- 
up domestic animal beside the wild or 
well -worked creature with its sinewy 
limbs, and scarce a particle of super- 
abundant flesh. All that you see in the 
latter is needed for activity or strength. 
Now wild plants require no artificial 
support, their fabric is justly proportioned, 
and they can therefore stand without 
finding their own weight burdensome. 
When we, therefore, look at the blossom- 
laden Fuchsia in a flower-show, which 
requires a prop for every limb, however 
we may admire the beauty of the flowers, 
let us never forget how artificial such 
treatment is, how altogether incompatible 
with a well-balanced perfection of the 
plant. What should we think of such 
a system of training applied to human 
beings, which gave large intellect and 
a noble countenance at the expense of 

182 



On Gardeners' Flowers 



a debilitated frame ? You may say that 
the cases are not precisely parallel, be- 
cause in man the general health would 
here be deranged, while in plants it is 
not necessarily so. But supposing that 
the general health could be equally un- 
affected in man, would that make any 
difference ? Would these mental ad- 
vantages be well bought for a nation 
at that large expense of physical ? Yet 
I do not condemn this mode of flower 
training when it effects any worthy im- 
provements, provided always that these 
highly cultivated forms are not allowed 
to drive out the others. 

We sometimes find an author speaking 
of branches breaking down under their 
load of fruit as if he considered this a 
beauty. It is just as much beautiful or 
desirable as to see the body destroyed 
by an over-activity of the brain. 



183 



PART III 
VEGETATION 



I 



spring and Summer V egetation 

THERE is a characteristic differ- 
ence betwixt the earHer and the 
later flowering plants in the mode 
of putting forth their blossoms. 
Trees or shrubs of the later type seem 
generally to prefer to develop these 
blossoms from the extremity of a lengthy 
shoot ; in the later examples of the type, 
such as the Clematis or Rose, no trace 
of flower-buds appearing till the shoot 
has nearly perfected its leaves.^ In 
earlier examples, however, like the Horse 
Chestnut or the Lilac, the flower-buds 
are distinctly visible from the first, and 
come to perfection almost simultaneously 
with the foliage, or in other cases even 
a little sooner, so that the plant when 
in bloom has an unfinished half-developed 

^ By " shoot " I mean the stem of this year's growth, 
as contrasted with the branch, which comes from some 
former year. 

187 



Flowers and Gardens 



look. It is altogether different in the 
case of those trees and shrubs which 
flower in the early spring. Here the 
blossom, instead of being borne upon 
a shoot, is put forth close upon the 
branches. In the common Hazel, for 
instance, or in the yellow Cornus mas 
Off the shrubberies, it lies all the winter 
just ready for unfolding, and then opens 
at once before a leaf is visible. As 
the season advances, we find blossoms 
upon longer stalks, and accompanied by 
a few young sprouting leaves ; or perhaps, 
as in the flowering Currant, they appear 
amidst a general bursting of the leaf- 
buds, so that the plant when in bloom 
has the unfinished, half-developed look 
of which we have already spoken. The 
wild Sloe, or cultivated Plum, the Elm, 
Mezereon, and the early Willows, will fur- 
nish us with other examples of this type.^ 

And what has been said of trees and 
shrubs will hold good also of the her- 
baceous plants. In the first few months 
of the year, we do not so commonly find 
arising a loose, much-branching, leafy 
structure, like that of the Buttercups, or 

1 [There are some marked exceptions to this type, as 
in Laurustinus, Box, Agara, Daphne Blagayana, &c., 
which bear their flowers in early spring and when the 
shrubs are in full leaf. — H. N. E.] 

i88 



spring and Summer Vegetation 

the Umbelliferse (Hemlockworts), and 
other of the later bloomers. We have a 
greater number of those low, compactly- 
built plants, such as the Dandelion, Colts- 
foot, Violet, and Daffodil, whose flowers 
come straight from the root, and seem as 
if they had been placed there just ready 
for unfolding. And in plants of a differerft 
description, as the Water -Blob {Caltha 
palustris), which gilds the early marsh 
with such sudden splendour, or the Ground 
Ivy and Chickweed, there is a marked 
tendency to assume a like general aspect. 

Now what is the object of this charac- 
teristic difference of type? In the first 
place, evidently, that in the early flowerers 
the bloom should be evolved as rapidly 
and with as little preliminary effort as pos- 
sible. The earlier the plant has to blossom, 
the less work it must have to do before 
the blossom is put forth. Besides, longer 
stalks or leafy shoots would expose a larger 
surface unnecessarily to the cold. And 
this might prove injurious to even the 
hardiest plants, as we often see the foliage 
of the Elder and of other trees early in 
their leaf suffering most severely in the 
biting winds of March. In the second 
place, by this arrangement all undue inter- 
ference is prevented, so that everything in 

189 



Flowers and Gardens 



its season may appear at full advantage. 
Blossoms in the summer-time would be in 
danger of being hidden by the leaves if 
they came forth close upon the branches. 
This type is accordingly made to belong 
characteristically to the season in which 
leaves are imperfectly developed, and the 
summer blossoms are generally placed 
upon stalks which carry them beyond the 
foliage. Arrangements of the same sort 
for preventing interference hold every- 
where in the kingdom of plants. The 
humbler must come forth first, where the 
higher would rise up to veil them, and 
must, therefore, principally belong to an 
early season of the year. The early spring 
flowers would be little noticed if they came 
first in the deep grass of May or June. 
Daisies may be found there, it is true, but 
not those rich milky stars which dapple 
the soft blue-green of the April meadows ; 
the little Celandine is gone, the golden 
day-fires of the Dandelion have lost their 
brightness, and it has almost ceased to 
burn even like a pale candle in the grass. 
Any of these flowers may linger, but their 
early loveliness is fled.^ We find the same 
thing again in the woodlands. There is 

^ Daisies are both common and beautiful in early 
summer. In the month of May their numbers are 

190 



Spring and Summer Vegetation 

no interference there, except such as con- 
stitutes an advantage. That rich carpet 
of Anemone, Violet, and Primrose might 
be choked by the thick undergrowth if it 
bloomed in the summer time, or be too 
much veiled by the foliage of the trees if 
that were developed earlier. But as it is, 
in early spring the slight shade of the 
naked boughs gives warmth and protec- 
tion, so that the flowers can come forth 
sooner, and possess a beauty which is 
wanting in less sheltered spots. Look, 
for instance, at those splendid Violets, 
large-flowered, long-stalked, which we find 
growing in the woods, or compare the 
wide-eyed woodland Anemones, in all 
their ethereal loveliness, with those which 
blossom in the open fields. 

Then, again, the full summer heat has a 
mischievous influence upon many of the 
woodland plants. We notice, for example, 
in a garden that the much-exposed Prim- 
roses are often damaged in the summer, 
and never have the same beautiful appear- 
ance as those which grow under proper 
cover. So it has been wisely arranged 
that the leafy canopy of the woods shall 

greatly increased, but they have become of far less abso- 
lute importance, are crowded by the other plants, and 
never can rival the beauty of the April meadow-flower. 

191 



Flowers and Gardens 



just thicken in proportion as the sun gains 
strength, in order that there his rays may- 
be ever tempered and subdued, and de- 
prived of their power to injure. And thus 
in the woods these early spring flowers 
gain every advantage from their position 
and time of blooming. The soil at their 
roots is kept uniformly moist, and they are 
sheltered, not from necessary light, but 
only from hurtful extremes of heat and 
cold. 

The third advantage of this low com- 
pactness of growth which characterises the 
early spring is the readiness with which it 
enables the land to be wrought upon by 
the weather. In winter there is the utmost 
possible bareness. The heavy sodden 
earth must be exposed to be cracked and 
riven by the frost, after which the air can 
freely enter and reanimate it. But when 
frost and snow are at length disappearing 
the work is only half complete. The 
country has yet to be ventilated and 
washed. The earth is still being tem- 
pered by rapid alternations of heat and 
cold, the pouring rains and melting snows 
drench it, and are again dried up by the 
searching east winds. We can scarcely 
say that the work is accomplished till the 
time — 

192 



Spring and Summer Vegetation 

" Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote 
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote, 
And bathed every veyne in swich Ucour, 
Of which vertu engendred is the flour " — 

Chaucer s April being twelve days later 
than ours, and the March drought of 
which he speaks concluding with those 
dry east winds which we so often get at 
the beginning of the former month. Now 
it is evident that all this work will be 
greatly impeded by thick abundant vege- 
tation, and that loose, branching, long- 
stalked vegetation would itself sustain 
much damage. Plants never tend to 
assume this latter character on the higher 
parts of mountains, or on open heaths or 
moorlands, or anywhere else where the 
winds play freely. And so the neces- 
sities of Nature lead to one of the most 
striking features of the scenery of spring, 
its openness and compactness. Every- 
thing is free, and pervious to sun and air. 
We never get that feeling of seclusion, 
of being covered in, so beautifully adapted 
to the summer heat, which takes away 
our activity, and makes us long for rest 
in the shade. Then we have languor, 
meditation, and repose. Now everything 
is lively and joyous ; little rest or lying 
down in the open air, for no dependence 

193 N 



Flowers and Gardens 



can be placed upon the weather and its 
humours, the sunshine ever rapidly alter- 
nating with the shower. 

This compactness gives us a kind of 
beauty which we almost regret to lose. 
In the spring garden, for instance, when 
it chances to be well managed, what an 
exquisite neatness in the plants, a neat- 
ness which has no intrusive formality to 
vex us — those close little tufts of Snow- 
drop, Crocus, Aconite, or perhaps of the 
later flowers like Dog's-Tooth Violet and 
Anemone, springing up amidst shrubs 
and bushes all sparkling with leaf-buds, 
amongst ground leaves of such beauty 
that we almost regret to think that those 
Lupins, with their radiating star crystals, 
or those bright young shoots of Monks- 
hood, will presently start up and riot in 
the wild luxuriance of summer ! It is 
the same if we go into the open country, 
though there we find the withered wrecks 
of the past year, which the hand of art 
has removed from our gardens. It is 
singular how little careful Nature shows 
herself in some instances to make her 
work what we should consider as perfect. 
It is not only that she scorns a formal 
neatness, for every great human artist 
will do that, but that actually, as a part 

194 



spring and Summer Vegetation 

of her fundamental plan, she seems to 
wish to enforce a lesson of imperfection 
and decay, to remind us that the present 
state of things is insufficiently adapted 
to our wants, and always transient and 
underlaid by death. Thus flowers might 
easily have been made to wither neatly, 
for some, like the Gentianella, actually 
do so, resembling unexpanded buds, or 
they might have shrunk back into their 
calyces almost unnoticed amid the splen- 
dour of new-awakening blossoms. But 
these modes are exceptions ; the contrary 
is the rule. We were never meant to 
overlook decay. We cannot help noticing 
the disconsolate aspect of the fruit trees 
whilst their bloom is perishing, or that 
still deeper sadness which falls upon the 
gardens when the Lilac fades, and the 
gold of the Laburnum waxes pale, and 
the dirty - brown look of the withering 
Hawthorn casts a momentary blemish 
upon every country hedgerow. A sad- 
ness soon passing, it is true, soon lost in 
a sense of the new beauties which are 
everywhere developing around us, but 
yet no less surely there. And this im- 
perfection is no fault if we do but rightly 
understand it. It reminds us that earth 
is not the place in which to seek our 

195 



Flowers and Gardens 

pleasure, that snatches and glimpses of 
true loveliness are sufficient for us, to 
refresh us, and to tell us of a better 
world, and that these imperfect glimpses 
are all that we must expect to gain. 
But what, after all, do these blemishes 
amount to, when justly weighed against 
the good ? God's idea of the universe 
may be read in the heavens on any starry 
night. Stand near a town and watch 
the red lights in the houses, and think 
how much sin and evil are dwelling 
there ; and then, quitting those mournful 
thoughts, look up to the serene, unblem- 
ished stars. How pure, how lovely! 
And yet, perhaps, if we approached them 
more closely, they would be much like 
the world we dwell in, which to them 
seems just as fair. Is the lesson then 
a mournful one, that all things are false 
and hollow, or is it not rather one of 
unspeakable joy, that sin and all the evil 
of existence shall thus vanish into insig- 
nificance when once set in comparison 
with its glory, when we shall be so able 
to contemplate God's work in its vaster 
proportions, as will only be possible in 
looking back upon it from the immeasur- 
able distances of eternity? And so we 
find that the withered wrecks of dead 

196 



Spring and Summer Vegetation 

plants are really answering a purpose by 
staying with us so long. It would have 
been easy to have made them disappear 
with the approach of winter, but this 
would not have accorded with Nature's 
aims. They stand ugly till perhaps the 
middle or end of April, when faster decay 
and the rapid advance of the season clear 
them off. And if we study them aright 
they will really afford us pleasure. They 
give quite a peculiar aspect to the country, 
the new things being made to gradually 
replace the old. After the frost and snow 
have shattered the few last remnants of 
the summer, the fields are a dead, dull 
expanse, and very sweet it is to mark the 
cheerful green rising up and conquering 
the barrenness. And though perhaps it 
would be impossible to care much for last 
year s withered grass stalks, except as the 
frail ghosts of departed friends, we may 
certainly watch the bright green leaves 
springing up in the ditches amongst the 
old dry pipes of Hemlock (^Antkrtscics, 
&c.), and gain much pleasure from the 
contrast. 



197 



II 



On the Withering of Plants 

A FTER seeing any flower for a cer- 
/ \ tain length of time, we almost 
I V necessarily tire of its beauty. 
This is especially the case if it 
belongs to an uncomfortable season of 
the year. For instance, dearly as we 
love the Snowdrop, it soon begins to 
gather round it a train of recollections 
of cold and gloomy weather, and as we 
look upon it day after day, and its first 
charm loses force, these disagreeable as- 
sociations gain ascendency in a like pro- 
portion. Besides, each flower at the time 
of its first appearance is adapted to fill 
some characteristic place in the land- 
scape, but before it passes away the 
features of the landscape have changed, 
so as to harmonise more perfectly with 
the newly entering generation of blos- 
soms, which are bursting upon our sated 
eyes with all the advantages of novelty. 

198 



On the Withering of Plants 

The Snowdrop is thus extinguished before 
the Crocus, and the Crocus before the 
after flowers. The scene must never be 
vacant, the old must remain with us till 
the new is well unfolded ; but we care 
little for the last lingering blossoms, and 
even if they were as lovely as ever, they 
would remain as a thing of a bygone day, 
in which our interest has ceased. 

Now if there were no withering, and 
the petals continued perfect till they fell 
from the stalk, a flower would contrast 
with its successors at a great disadvan- 
tage — we should feel that it was being 
outshone by them. But Nature will not 
permit her favourites to be dishonoured 
in this way, and she quietly withdraws 
them from the rivalry. When we have 
seen them as long as she thinks good to 
permit, she lays their beauty waste. But 
before this is done, a close observer will 
notice that the plant's most subtle and 
exquisite attractions have been stolen 
away imperceptibly, so that even whilst 
there is no sign of actual decay, the 
power of enchantment is lost, and that 
which finally palls upon our memory is 
not the flower, but the flower robbed of 
its soul, a mere copy of the great original 
masterpiece. And to carry out this 

199 



Flowers and Gardens 



principle the more effectively, the later 
blossoms of a plant are nearly always 
made strikingly feeble and imperfect, so 
that we may most distinctly feel that the 
day of its glory is past. 

And even those plants which have 
goodly fruit, or which develop new beauty 
in decay, must be banished from our 
sight for some time after their bloom is 
spent. We see this very conspicuously 
in our fruit trees ; and even the Horse- 
Chestnut, though perhaps more uniformly 
beautiful than any other flowering tree we 
know, must wait after the white blaze of 
its flower-cones is extinguished before it 
may show its prickly balls of fruit, or the 
broad majesty of its hand-like foliage. 

And for plants which are said to bloom 
at all seasons the law is generally the 
same. Their beauty is at the best but 
at one brief period ; for the remainder 
of the year they sink into comparative 
insignificance. Take, for instance, the 
never-bloomless " Furze. There is per- 
haps no time, especially in the winter 
months, in which it would be impossible 
to discover at least some few of those 
bright yellow blossoms shining forth amid 
the darkness of its spacious branches. 

But the time of its full magnificence is 

200 



On the Withering of Plants 

May, and only then do we see those 
glorious spikes of bloom, studded thickly 
as if with almonds, which, especially in 
the county of Devon, form one of the 
most striking beauties of our forest lands. 
The plant looks ragged and miserable for 
some long while after this golden hoard 
is spent. And the Daisy, Dead Nettles, 
and Groundsel obey the same law as the 
Furze, though the Daisy lasts very long 
in bloom. The Groundsel is probably at 
its best in winter. In summer we are 
too apt to think of it only as a nuisance, 
and do not give it credit for the beauty 
it really possesses when growing in a 
fertile soil. 

Very few flowers make a creditable 
appearance when withering, and scarce 
any of our common ones can be said to 
wither into new beauty ; this is reserved 
for the less brilliantly coloured leaves. 
And though I cannot say how far the 
law will apply, it is the trees with incon- 
spicuous flowers, like the beech and elm, 
which make the most splendid appearance 
in our October woods. ^ 

Now why is this wearied feeling with 

^ [The Horse-Chestnut is an exception ; it is the most 
conspicuous in its flowers, and one of the most gorgeous 
in its autumnal tints. — H. N. E.] 

20I 



Flowers and Gardens 

which we look upon the fading Snowdrop 
so different from that with which we 
contemplate ruins and other memorials 
of the past? Because these tell us of 
the unknown and visionary, and tend to 
make it real, or of that well-nigh for- 
gotten past which we love to recall ; 
whilst the withered or unseasonable flower 
is connected with the immediate past, or 
is but the dregs of a beauty of which we 
have drunk our fill. And it is principally 
the early flowers which weary us when 
past their season, because they carry us 
back to the less perfect time. How 
miserable it is on some cold bleak upland 
to meet with Sloe blossom in May ! It 
seems to recall us to a world which we 
rejoiced at having left behind. It is the 
same, though in a less degree, with Haw- 
thorn at the end of June. The vegetation 
of May is supremely lovely, and we could 
well enjoy it longer, but this stray blossom 
gives us only such a taste, such a faint re- 
minder, of that loveliness, that the tedium 
of the past is uppermost, and we are 
wearied more than pleased. But we 
never grow tired of the last lingering 
flowers of summer, for there are no new- 
comers to eclipse them, and, besides, they 
are clothed with the last sad splendour 

202 



On the Withering of Plants 

of the departing year, which burns slowly 
away in long increasing beauty through 
the solemn grandeur of October, till the 
damp November mists come down like 
a shroud, and then all is extinguished, 
the last leaves shiver from the trees, and 
the last ripe fruit drops pattering to the 
earth. These relics do not tell us of a 
dreary time, and the very sadness of 
autumn is swallowed up in the sense of 
its more than earthly loveliness. It is 
as with the fall of music : it is passing 
from us, yet it moves so sweetly that we 
would not bid it stay. 

Nor is the feeling disagreeable when 
the flower really serves to connect us 
with an unknown past. When walking 
in the Jura woods in early summer, I 
have felt the intensest pleasure in starting 
upon the faded wrecks of some unaccus- 
tomed spring flowers, for the Jura spring 
was unknown to me, and these seemed 
dark entrances through which I could 
catch some far-off glimpses of its beauty. 
Again, we often find in summer that 
our feeling is just the contrary to that 
of which we have been speaking. Many 
a bloom will pass too rapidly in that 
crowded procession to permit more than 
a glance at its most precious beauties. 

203 



Flowers and Gardens 



We would often call a halt to look a 
little longer ; but no, that cannot be. 
The plant remains in abundance, but its 
special beauty is often as fleeting as the 
sunset, and is perhaps visible only in 
the choicest specimens. The darling 
blue" of the little Speedwell, as Tennyson 
calls it, will be often found thus transitory. 
Specimen after specimen may we examine, 
and find it only grey, and when we have 
at last discovered the genuine tint, the 
corolla drops almost immediately from the 
gathered stalk, and the colour will never 
reappear in the succeeding flowers. 



THE END 



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